My Pilgrim's Progress: Media Studies, 1950-1998

"I don't just like Ike," declares George W.S. Trow, "I love him. I think he's the guy of guys, I think he's uniquely American, and I'm sorry we're not going to have him anymore." That admiration permeates the pages of My Pilgrim's Progress, a stream-of-consciousness consideration of "how 1950 got to be 1998." As an analysis of how American culture became media culture, My Pilgrim's Progress is brilliant and insightful, particularly the sections on modern newspaper journalism and what Trow calls "the aesthetic of Dwight David Eisenhower" (in which he segues from the novels of John O'Hara to an appearance by Joan Rivers on QVC). But readers will either be seduced or driven mad by Trow's rambling, I-know-what-I'm-talking-about-just-trust-me prose style, in many cases literally transcribed from tapes of his immediate reactions to old newspaper headlines. Although you can't say you weren't warned: Trow advises at one point, "I just want to discuss the attractive inevitability of visceral reactions, which, of course, is exactly our political process, especially our presidential process, and I'm going to do it from a personal point of view." --Ron Hogan