READ JOHN POWERS' LATEST COLUMN
[LA Weekly, April 15-21 issue] Read the latest "ON" column from the LA Weekly:
The Mortal Storm (see index of all columns)

LATEST NEWS
Listen to John Powers discussing "Sore Winners" on NPR's Fresh Air.
Read an excerpt of "Sore Winners" from the LA Weekly.
Read the AlterNet interview with John Powers.

AUTHOR EVENTS
Visit the Sore Winners book page for Author Events and more book info.

PRAISE FOR SORE WINNERS
"Powers is news to me. I've never seen a copy of L.A. Weekly, for which he writes about culture and the media; I don't listen to NPR's "Fresh Air," for which he is a film critic; I only glance at the recipes in Gourmet, for which he is an international correspondent. The loss, Sore Winners makes plain, has been mine. He is a clever, quick-witted writer with a gift for the dead-on zinger — the Left's answer to P.J. O'Rourke, David Brooks, Andrew Ferguson, Christopher Caldwell et al., though obviously he's seriously outnumbered — and he seems to have read, listened to, watched and gone online with just about everything. He's a pop-culture omnivore who understands that, like Bush, pop culture has to be taken seriously and that, unlikely though it may seem, there are connections between the two that command attention." [read the full review]


"Sore Winners puts it all in perspective. . . . It takes on icons of both the left and the right, decoding the through-the-looking-glass landscape of contemporary American culture."


"A bittersweet, breezy, smart look at current politics in the larger context of American culture — or what passes for it. Enough right-on digs at current icons to cover the cost of admission!"


"'Sore Winners' rises above the shrieking din..."


"With the presidential election looming, Powers' brilliant synthesis and recap is invaluable!"
— BOOKLIST

"Extremely funny. . . . Is it an incredibly good read! If pop culture and politics are your bread and butter, you'd better believe it!. . . . A momentously entertaining book."
— James Norton, FLAKMAG.COM

"The best and the most persuasive. . . . the only one to try to tie all of the last 3 1/2 post-traumatic years together!"
— THE BUFFALO NEWS

"Powers packs more sense in a quick sentence than others can fit into an entire book."
— COLORADO SPRINGS INDEPENDENT

“John Powers’s Sore Winners is an angry but astonishingly good-humored and generous account of the degraded political and media culture of the Bush era. Powers has read everything, watched everything, and come out of his obsession with his sanity and sense of proportion intact. A true populist intellectual, he has a sharp eye for elitism, the cant of the powerful, and the paralyzing dullness of his own side. I can’t imagine a better guide for anyone trying to get his head screwed on right and mount a free-swinging attack on the worst president and the crassest popular culture in recent American history.”
—David Denby, New Yorker film critic and author of American Sucker

“Powers’s Sore Winners is surreally comprehensive, laserously observant, 85 percent correct, and refreshingly unshrill.”
– David Foster Wallace

“While reading this funny and engaging book, I felt the hair I had torn out reading David Brooks start to grow back.”
—David Rees, author of Get Your War On

“It’s so hard, these days, to cut through the noise and nonsense and get it right. The polymath Powers has done it, with this grand confection of wit, insight and blazing, level-headed honesty. Delicious!”
– Ron Suskind, author of A Hope in the Unseen and The Price of Loyalty

“A disturbing trip down memory lane that places the last four years in true, horrible relief. John Powers takes us into the funhouse – and then shows us a way out.”
—Colson Whitehead, author of John Henry Days and The Colossus of New York

visit the Sore Winners book page for more.


About the Author
JOHN POWERS is film critic for Vogue and writes a fortnightly column, "On," for LA Weekly and The Village Voice. He is also critic-at-large for NPR's "Fresh Air with Terry Gross." He lives in Pasadena, CA. with his wife, Sandi Tan.