Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero (2012)

By Larry Tye

The first day we were back in our offices after the summer, during what's called “On-Call Week” (I keep telling them, “I'm not that kind of doctor!”), one of my senior colleagues – a US historian – came to my office and said he had something to show me. In his office he presented me with this book, which he said he had received a few weeks ago, and during his reading he kept telling his wife, “Kent would really like this book!” He was right about that. He loaned it to me, and I finished it last night. It is perhaps the best single book I've ever read on the greatest hero of 20th-century American pop culture, and a great introduction to a genre of story-telling that I have loved since childhood and will continue to love until the day I die. The author neatly places each within the changing contexts from the era of their conception, the 1930s, all the way until the present, when although the comic-book medium itself is but a shadow of its former self, at least in terms of sales, the granddaddy of all superheroes himself remains a cultural icon recognized and loved not just in the US but all around the world.

For the rest of my thoughts on this wonderful book, go here.

Cheers!