Book excerpt: Michael Jackson died in 2009, but he has never really left us and there are no signs he ever will. A globally acclaimed child star in the 1970s, the world's premier entertainer in the final decades of the 20th century, a perplexingly odd character in the 21st century, Jackson defied every known category and became borderline incomprehensible. To remedy this, in The Destruction and Creation of Michael Jackson, Ellis Cashmore reflects the restless, unorthodox and mysterious life Jackson led in order to understand more about him as well as his cultural impact. Exploring how Jackson emerged from the post-civil rights era when America was searching for someone who symbolized a new age as it struggled to unburden itself of racial inequality, Cashmore's book is the first to examine Jackson's career through the prisms of American racial politics and celebrity culture. Uniquely structured, beginning in the present and journeying back to Jackson's birth, The Destruction and Creation of Michael Jackson will excite and enliven debates on this controversial figure, one that very much continues to remain embedded within our culture.