THE BAD MAN'S HAT. IN CONFLICT WITH VILLAINS (REAL AND IMAGINARY), CHUCK KLOSTERMAN

With his characteristic sardonic and multi-referential style, which makes him the only author capable of elegantly jumping from Metallica to Machiavelli in just a couple of paragraphs, Chuck Klosterman addresses on this occasion the role of villains (real and imaginary) in contemporary popular culture and our love/hate relationship with antiheroes, revealing how inconsistent, unpredictable and surprisingly elastic our concepts of good and evil can be.
What makes someone a villain in the public eye? Why do we continue to admire certain people even though they've proven to be far worse than others we detest? When does a villain cease to be a villain? Why do certain traits admired in fiction seem repulsive to us in real life? Is it legitimate to hate the Eagles? Is Kanye West harmful to the world? Was Seinfeld The most psychopathic comedy ever created?
Morris Day and Prince, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, Walter White and Stringer Bell, Batman and Bernhard Goetz, Aleister Crowley and Ozzy Osbourne, Machiavelli and Julian Assange, Bill Clinton and Perez Hilton, Ice Cube and Lars von Trier, OJ Simpson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Slavoj Žižek and Jerry Seinfeld, Kanye West and LeBron James, Bob Dylan and the inevitable Adolf Hitler are just some of the many characters who wander through the pages of The Bad Guy's Hat in a fun journey into the heart of darkness of contemporary popular culture.

"Klosterman has a singular talent for holding up a high-definition magic mirror to American popular culture, painfully revealing all our vanities and false illusions. By highlighting the contradictory and often mechanical ways we receive the heroes and villains of our culture, Klosterman illustrates the passionate but incomplete formulas that have come to define American culture and perhaps even our morality."
—Los Angeles Times

"With the poise of a modern Machiavelli, exploring our changing moral landscape in search of examples to prove his theses, Klosterman takes us on a grand journey through villainy in popular culture, sports, politics, and U.S. history. Erudite, provocative, and mischievous."
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"It weaves together remarkable anecdotes, interesting cultural analyses, and suggestive moral observations in a perceptive approach to our love affair with the antihero."
—New York Magazine

"He approaches his arguments with humor and intellectual rigor. A stimulating book."
—The Washington Post

• Paperback with flaps
• 288 pp. 14 x 21.5 cm.
• Illustrations by David Sánchez
• ISBN: 978-84-944587-1-2