The Velvet Underground & Nico was released in the spring of 1967. For decades, the cliché has been that it initially only sold 10,000 copies, though everyone who bought it supposedly started a band. It is the definition of a record whose influence outstrips its mass popularity. But what if the opposite had transpired? What if instead of selling 10,000 copies, it had sold…10 million copies? What if it had sold 100 million copies? What would have happened if the Velvet Underground had inexplicably become the biggest group in the history of popular music, and everything about the rest of the 20th century was merely a footnote to that phenomenon? Chuck Klosterman has generated a fictitious universe where almost everything is different, except for the songs.

Chuck Klosterman did not write this book to deepen your appreciation of football. He’s not trying to help you become that person at the party, or to teach you how to make better bets, or to validate any preexisting views you might have about the sport (positive or negative). Football does, in fact, do all of those things. But not in the way such things have been done in the past. Cultural theorists talk about hyperobjects --- phenomena that bulk so large that their true dimensions are hidden in plain sight. In 2023, 93 of the 100 most-watched programs on U.S. television were NFL football games. This is not an anomaly. This is how society is best understood. Football is not merely the country’s most popular sport; it is ingrained in almost everything that explains what America is, even for those who barely pay attention. Klosterman gets to the bottom of all of it.

It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn’t know who it was. By the end, exposing someone’s address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn’t know who it was. The ’90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we’re still groping to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job.

A man flying first class discovers a puma in the lavatory. A new coach of a small-town Oklahoma high school football team installs an offense comprised of only one, very special, play. A college professor discusses with his friend his difficulties with the new generation of students. A woman interviews a hit man about killing her husband but is shocked by the method he proposes. Fair warning: RAISED IN CAPTIVITY does not slot into a smooth preexisting groove. If Saul Steinberg and Italo Calvino had adopted a child from a Romanian orphanage and raised him on Gary Larsen and Thomas Bernhard, he would still be nothing like Chuck Klosterman. They might be good company, though.

Chuck Klosterman has created an incomparable body of work in books, magazines, newspapers and on the Web. His writing spans the realms of culture and sports, while also addressing interpersonal issues, social quandaries and ethical boundaries. He has written nine previous books, and contributed profiles and essays to outlets such as GQ, Esquire, Billboard, The A.V. Club and The Guardian. Klosterman’s 10th book collects his most intriguing of those pieces, accompanied by fresh introductions and new footnotes throughout. He presents many of the articles in their original form, featuring previously unpublished passages and digressions.

Though no generation believes there’s nothing left to learn, every generation unconsciously assumes that what has already been defined and accepted is (probably) pretty close to how reality will be viewed in perpetuity. And then, of course, time passes, ideas shift and opinions invert. What once seemed reasonable eventually becomes absurd, replaced by modern perspectives that feel even more irrefutable and secure --- until, of course, they don’t. BUT WHAT IF WE’RE WRONG? visualizes the contemporary world as it will appear to those who will perceive it as the distant past.

In I WEAR THE BLACK HAT, Chuck Klosterman questions the modern understanding of villainy. What was so Machiavellian about Machiavelli? Why don’t we see Bernhard Goetz the same way we see Batman? Who is more worthy of our vitriol --- Bill Clinton or Don Henley? What was O.J. Simpson’s second-worst decision? And why is Klosterman still haunted by some kid he knew for one week in 1985?

Austin, Texas therapist Victoria Vick has been contacted by a man who believes his situation is unique. But as he reveals himself to her slowly and cryptically, she becomes convinced that he suffers from a complex set of delusions --- he is a scientist who has been using cloaking technology from an aborted government project to render himself nearly invisible.