The New York Times , 100 Notable Books of 2020 Chicago Tribune , The 10 Best Books of 2020 NPR, Best Books of 2020 Rolling Stone, Best Music Books of 2020 Financial Times , Best Books of 2020 Air Mail , Top 10 Books of 2020 "A work of enormous intellectual range and subtle artistic judgment that pokes and probes the nerve endings of Western cultural and social norms as they are mirrored in more than a century of reaction to Wagner''s works. The book has its own ''Wagnerian'' heft and ambitiousness of intent, being nothing less than a history of ideas that spans an arc from Nietzsche and George Eliot to Philip K. Dick, ''Apocalypse Now'' and neo-Nazi skinheads . Ross has dug deep into some of the most fertile (and occasionally most bizarre) terrain of Western culture, examining and bringing to light the struggles for individuation and self-discovery of a host of reactive minds." -- John Adams, The New York Times Book Review "[ Wagnerism ] takes up Wagner''s protean impact with unprecedented scope . The result is an indispensable work of cultural history, offering both a comprehensive resource and a bravura narrative . Extraordinary . As Mr.

Ross richly details, Wagner''s appeal to women and gays is a hallmark of his achievement." --Joseph Horowitz, The Wall Street Journal "Capacious and enthralling . In Wagner''s operas, sums up Ross, ''we see the highest and the lowest impulses of humanity entangled.'' In Wagnerism , however, those impulses--aesthetic, sexual, philosophical and political--are deftly untangled, then enticingly presented for the general reader. The result is a superb example of cultural history and, given its themes, a work surprisingly relevant to this plague-ridden, watershed year." -- Michael Dirda, The Washington Post "Readers who let Ross lead them anew through the 20th century in 2007''s The Rest Is Noise will find familiar comforts in his sure guidance and musical prose. But they''ll find dazzling new dimensions in his scholarship, as adept with large swaths of history as attentive to small crannies of expertise." -- Michael Andor Brodeur, The Washington Post (Best Classical Music of 2020) "Magnificent .

Every culture has its own issues with Wagner, and Ross'' even hand is especially impressive when taking on the Big One. His explication of Hitler''s rise and the legacy of Wagner''s anti-Semitism is a moving lamentation . In the end, the inconsistencies are what made Wagner matter, and what make Ross today''s perfect Wagnerite." -- Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times "Suavely brilliant . [This] magnum opus more than a decade in the making sets out to do nothing less than chart the entire scope of Wagner''s influence in Western history and culture, including everything from French Symbolist poetry to ''Star Wars.'' That capsule description conveys the work''s jaw-dropping blend of ambition and erudition, but downplays its easy accessibility." --Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle "Here is cultural history that ties together politics, philosophy, sex, war and race . Ross is particularly good at picking apart contradiction--and the legacy of anti-Semitism--infamously embodied by Wagnerian ideas.

But this is not a biography of a man. It''s a tracing of an aesthetic, one overwrought and foundational, and Ross chips away geologic layers to identify the rot. You''ll see your world differently." --Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune "One of the many beauties of this incomparably rich book is that it refuses to engage in any simplistic analysis of its subject, who emerges in his full bewildering complexity. It is one of the most valuable books about Wagner I know of, compelling one to engage not merely with the composer and his legacy but with music itself, how it works on us, what it is . The miracle of Ross''s book is that it is so fresh and so personal; his intellectual stamina, though prodigious, is never flaunted." --Simon Callow, Air Mail "How far art and artist can be separated is an age-old question . By presenting an honest assessment of the problem, Wagnerism supplies, if not answers, then at least the right questions.

" --The Economist "Ross''s impressive research has uncovered hundreds upon hundreds of Wagnerian references, allusions, and influences in the art and literature of the last 150 years . [Ross] offers insightful discussions of Wagner''s most significant legacies--for theater direction and narrative technique, for feminism and queer culture, and for revolutionary politics." --Adam Kirsch, The New Republic "Ross is making the difficult argument for complexity, and against great-man hero worship generally . For all its authorial caution and scholarly deference, Ross has produced what feels like a deeply personal work . Wagnerism is pleasurably readable, even funny . Ross'' book and his extraordinary scholarship amply suggest that any anxiety over the survival of Wagnerism as a sensibility and theory of art, independent of its creator, is misplaced as well." -- Franz Nicolay, Slate "[A] superb chronicle of obsession, intoxication, hyperbolic exultation, appropriation, exploitation, repudiation, transmutation, and perpetual reinvention--an aerial view of a culture''s nervous system as it responds to an unexpected stimulus. In the end, Wagnerism is, however obliquely, very much a book about Wagner and his music, all the richer for being filtered through such a range of listeners and spectators .

This history of listening becomes a history of consciousness--and ultimately collides with a history of poisonous hatred and genocidal violence." -- Geoffrey O''Brien, Bookforum "Sweepingly original . [Ross] ushers readers along an endlessly fascinating tour of the lives and works touched by, in his words, ''the chaotic posthumous cult'' spawned by a composer with a gift for making impassioned friends and equally impassioned enemies . In page after lucid page, Ross narrates this epic tour while hovering above the fray with a kind of lyrical skepticism that eventually starts to feel like its own quietly principled way of knowing the past: an ethic of reading history against its accumulated layers, granting irony its own power of illumination, and holding open a space for complex, contradictory truths." --Jeremy Eichler, The Boston Globe "Ross offers a powerful sense of the metamorphoses in Wagnerism across overlapping generations . [and] a splendid presentation of American Wagnerism . Ross''s focus on Wagnerism is at its sharpest when he addresses the long-term ideological implications of what Wagner himself saw as the socially transformative power of opera. The book also offers fascinating insight when Ross considers the more private significance of Wagnerism as a force for shaping personal identities.

" --Larry Wolff, The Times Literary Supplement "Alex Ross''s massive new book is worthy of its subject. [He] makes a convincing--and astonishing--case for Wagner''s presence in the modern literary canon . Ross states: ''Writing this book has been the great education of my life.'' It has much to offer other lives as well." --Steven G. Kellman, The American Scholar "The strongest pages in Wagnerism . deal with the complex position of Wagner in Hitler''s imagination, Nazi Germany, and the Allied countries before, during, and immediately after World War II. Ross brings a feeling for historical paradox and ambiguity to this prototypical case study in the relationship among art, society, and politics.

" --Jed Perl, The New York Review of Books "Illuminating . Ross traces the controversial composer''s influence across what the author calls the ''artists of silence'': novelists, poets, and painters. What makes Wagnerism such a challenging and rewarding read is how Ross comes to terms with that influence . Where once was a man, there is now only a shadow. What shape that shadow takes, Wagnerism suggests, says just as much about the beholder as it does about the body that once cast it." --Ashley Naftule, The AV Club "Ross makes a persuasive case that the nineteenth-century German composer wasn''t just the most influential artist of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but maybe the most influential artist ever in any form . [ Wagnerism ] confronts the moment''s dilemma of how to think about bad men making great art that inspires both more great art and unfathomable evil." -- Steve Erickson, LA Magazine "Ross has written a sweeping and erudite book.

In his hands, Wagner becomes a master key that unlocks innumerable facets of modern culture. Ross moves with grace and sophistication across many national contexts and artistic movements . And he never lets his enormous learning get in the way of the fun. In 1886, the French musicologist Georges Servières observed, ''The definitive book on Richard Wagner is still unwritten.'' That may still be true. But with Wagnerism , Alex Ross comes as close as any mortal is likely to get." -- Charlie Tyson, The Hedgehog Review "Reading Wagnerism took me two weeks, and once through with it, I felt as if I''d spent a fortnight in Bayreuth among affable and highly informed friends. It''s a magnificent, eminently readable and often entertaining fund of knowl.