Shaman

Praise for Mike Sager

"Sager plays Virgil in the modern American Inferno . . . Compelling and stylish magazine journalism, rich in novelistic detail." -Kirkus Reviews

"Like his journalistic precursors Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, Sager writes frenetic, off-kilter pop-sociological profiles of Americans in all their vulgarity and vitality . . . He writes with flair, but only in the service of an omnivorous curiosity and defies expectations in pieces that lesser writers would play for satire or sensationalism . . . A Whitmanesque ode to teeming humanity's mystical unity."    -The New York Times Book Review

"Sager's writing is strikingly perceptive. He writes like a novelist, stocking his stories with the details and observations other journalists might toss away." --KPBS Radio's "Culture Lust" blog

"Mike Sager writes about places and events we seldom get a look at-and people from whom we avert our eyes. But with Sager in command of all the telling details, he shows us history, humanity, humor, sometimes even honor. He makes us glad to live with our eyes wide open."   --Richard Ben Cramer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of What It Takes: The Way to the White House

"Mike Sager is the Beat poet of American journalism, that rare reporter who can make literature out of shabby reality. Equal parts reporter, ethnographer, stylist, and cultural critic, Sager has for twenty years carried the tradition of Tom Wolfe on his broad shoulders, chronicling the American scene and psyche. Nobody does it sharper, smarter, or with more style." -Walt Harrington, author of Intimate Journalism.

"I can recognize the truth in these stories-tales about the darkest possible side of wretched humanity. Sager has obviously spent too much time in flop houses in Laurel Canyon." --Hunter S. Thompson, author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas