RaveBookforum... a crowded and mesmerizing history ... [a] superb chronicle of obsession, intoxication, hyperbolic exultation, appropriation, exploitation, repudiation, transmutation, and perpetual reinvention—an aerial view of a culture’s nervous system as it responds to an unexpected stimulus. In the end, Wagnerism is, however obliquely, very much a book about Wagner and his music, all the richer for being filtered through such a range of listeners and spectators ... As a non-musician myself, I like the importance that Ross places on their reactions, reactions that occur (as his subtitle puts it) \'in the shadow of music\' ... Ross draws on an impressive range of texts, delving particularly deep into the arcana of fin-de-siècle literature.
