Starstruck

Why are we so obsessed with fame? In Starstruck, former autograph hound and current entertainment journalist Michael Joseph Gross searches for the answer as he travels from Hollywood to Dollywood, Neverland to Middle Earth. He chases after Mick Jagger with a professional autograph collector; gets the inside scoop from Mary Hart on covering Hollywood for Entertainment Tonight; walks the red carpet with Sean Astin during The Lord of the Rings's Oscar championship season; and discovers what fans look like to the celebrities themselves-who often seem to be among the most starstruck of us all. Absorbing.-Michael Musto, Village Voice Jaw-dropping.-The Advocate Starstruck is a wonderful blend of insight, personal history, sociology, and hilarious gossip…I can't wait for people to start asking Gross for his autograph.-Glen David Gold, author of Carter Beats the Devil Gross works the fame-shame equation with a piercingly funny perceptiveness.-East Bay Express Like an anthropologist trained in Hollywood culture, [Gross] understands the positive and negative results of adulation…Gross's writing is honest and humane, and his book is an entertaining look at modern celebrity culture.-Publishers Weekly It's hard to imagine a more important, underestimated, and vexing subject for America today than celebrity, and Michael Gross's treatment of the subject is everything one would hope it could be: thoughtful, generous, rigorous, and suspicious of cant.-Jim Shepard, author of Project X Also available: Starstruck hc 1-58234-316-0 ISBN-13 978-1-58234-316-7 $23.95