=book recently read: American Meteor by Norman Lock=

Not nearly as inventive, as electrifying, or as fun to read as "A History of the Imagination" but then you couldn't reasonably expect it to be. You have to give Lock points for not writing the same book twice, which is the fatal trap so many writers fall into when they've managed to perform magic one time. They go back to the same trick again and again until its totally played out, until it becomes a formula, a catechism they could recite without thinking, a catechism you could recite without reading. See Chuck Palahniuk as a prime example; he's been writing different variations of the same once-upon-a-time original book for the last twenty years.