AN LA TIMES BESTSELLER. Named a Most Anticipated Book by People , Vulture, A.V. Club and OurCulture. One of Glamour 's Best Summer Beach Reads. "Like a J.D. Salinger novel rolled in Hunter S. Thompson's hallucinogen dust." ―Ann Powers, author of Travelling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell " [ Waiting for Britney Spears ] transformed and transported me." ―Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There's Always This Year A frenetic, gonzo account of Britney Spears’s historic rise and equally tragic fall told by an iconoclastic music journalist. America, 2003: A country at war, its shiny veneer beginning to crack. Von Dutch and The Simple Life dominate. And on the cover of every magazine, a twenty-one-year-old pop star named Britney Spears. Tracking her every move for a third-tier gossip rag in Los Angeles was an unknown young writer taking whatever job he could while pursuing his distant literary dreams. He'd instead become an eyewitness to the slow tragedy of a changing nation, represented in spirit by “the coy it-girl at the end of history.” Years later, after finally establishing himself as a celebrated journalist, Jeff Weiss presents Waiting for Britney Spears , a gonzo, nostalgic, and “allegedly true” recounting of his years as a tabloid spy in the lurid underbelly of Los Angeles. Weiss follows America’s sweetheart through Vegas superclubs and Malibu car chases, annulled marriages and soul-crushing legal battles, all the way to Britney’s infamous 2007 VMA performance. As Weiss lives through the chaos leading to Britney’s conservatorship, he observes, with peerless style, cringe-inducing fashion waves, destructive celebrity surveillance, and a country whose decline is embodied by the devastating downturn of its former golden child. With the narrative flair that established him as a singular chronicler of modern pop culture, Weiss goes for broke in Waiting for Britney Spears, a descent into a neon hall of mirrors reflecting our obsession with fame, morality, and the mystery of what really happened to the last great pop star. "Weiss excels at evoking the darkness and frivolity of the 2000s world he slinks through . . . Reading the book can feel―this is a good thing―like mainlining the sugar at the bottom of a Sour Patch Kids box." ―Alexis Soloski, The New York Times "Incredibly entertaining and frequently insane . . . a kinetic, extravagantly written fever dream." ―Allison Stewart, The Washington Post "Weiss takes a reader on a journey through Britney’s story, offering vivid scenes of her meeting and marrying various ineligible men, navigating paparazzi chases, and trying to be a good mom, to differing degrees of success . . . Despite its source material, the book itself doesn’t feel exploitative; there’s a deep love and respect for its titular star that comes through." ―Elisabeth Garber-Paul, Rolling Stone "It's delectable, daring and just begs to be read poolside." ―Lizz Schumer, People "Weiss does a masterful job of navigating our celebrity-obsessed world and the complexities that come with it. I, for one, could not put it down, especially thanks to all the Y2K references that made the inner 2000s kid in me jump for joy." ―Chantal Waldholz, Glamour "More than an incredible and uniquely intimate account of Britney’s dismantlement by the paparazzi, Waiting dares to speak about coming-of-age in the bust of the dot-com boom: it sucked . . . I could not put it down; I had to know what happened next, even when I already knew. But beyond being a damn good story, Waiting ’s major accomplishment is its ability to enthrall without a sacrificial lamb―or woman . . . Down to the line level, Waiting is a fun house for language, mirrors throwing back words that have been warped with new and inventive meanings yet are nonetheless crystal clear." ―Reece Sisto, Los Angeles Review of Books "Among the recent glut of books picking over the wreckage of mid-2000s tabloid culture, Jeff Weiss’s fictionalized memoir offers the tightest close-up on Britney’s breakdown . . . Weiss magnifies the hard surfaces of LA in the 2000s." ―Chal Ravens, London Review of Books “What makes Waiting for Britney Spears so compelling is not the brilliant writing, which has elements of Hunter Thompson, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, but also its moral center . . . Weiss’s writing is poetic and electrifying.” ―Mark Judge, The Washington Examiner "The ultimate künstlerroman on Britney . . . Weiss acknowledges his, and by extension, our, complicity in crafting a profuse need for wanton celebrity breakdowns, the pressure building toward the dam till it bursts open, never to be contained again . . . Waiting For Britney Spears at its heart is a love letter to Britney, both literally and figuratively." ―Eli Schoop, Cleveland Review of Books "An exhilarating trip through the ups and downs of Britney Spears’s career . . . In colorful, entertaining detail, Weiss lucidly explains how the papar
