Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternatives

In June of 1992, when all the polls showed that Bill Clinton didn't have a chance, he took his saxophone onto the Arsenio Hall show, put on dark glasses, and blew "Heartbreak Hotel." Greil Marcus, one of America's most imaginative and insightful popular culture critics, was the first to name this as the moment that turned Clinton's campaign around--and to make sense of why. Double Trouble draws on articles Marcus published from 1992 to 2000 to explore the remarkable and illuminating kinship between Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley--and, moreover, to explore how culture is made and shared in today's America and how, through culture, people remake themselves.

Greil Marcus is the author of Dead Elvis; Lipstick Traces; The Old, Weird America; and Mystery Train. His pieces have appeared in a wide range of publications, including Artforum, Interview, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Esquire. He lives in Berkeley, California.