1976 plucks the deepest chords of America's Bicentennial year. It exposes the guts of our country's political, historical, and cultural machine in a prose that matches the rhythms of horror, joy, and sheer madness in our national psyche. This is as original, inventive, and fresh a book as any historian or novelist of note has written about the US. A juggernaut of improbability and inevitability, her vision of America rolls in simultaneously from the past and the future, with a posse of grand ghosts. Her brilliant saga is driven by the music that never stops rocking the North American continent, and, in an essential way, births her. Volpert is heir to Whitman, Hunter S. Thompson, and the Ramones who, unbeknownst to themselves, will appear in 1976-a book that heralds a grand new genre." - Andrei Codrescu, author and Peabody Award-winner for the film Road Scholar, a journey into post-Kerouac America.