Popular Music in America:

This last review has given no credit to the author whatsoever. The author is not "hating" on Michel, or any other artist for that matter as he has portrayed him to be. Rather he has focussed much of his book on not necessarily the artist, but on the style, and as you may know, Michael, Prince and Madonna do in fact have similar styles. I for one am citing this book for a research paper comparing Mainstream music and Alternative music, and it has been very helpful, and maybe the reason that this previous review has given a negative reflection on this book is because it was not what the writer of this review was looking for in a book. Anyone will write a good review on something that they agree with, it takes a true uncorrupted critic to write an accurate review of something they completely disagree with. In short, this book compares styles quite nicely, and would be a great help for any essay comparing music styles. 

It is obvious that this author is a big Prince fan.
It devotes three pages to Prince' combination of musical genres and styles, but devotes about 1 only full page to just Michael Jackson's. Hell, even Madonna got a bigger section than he did. It doesn't even talk about the album, Thriller, in detail and why it was so influential to many r&b and pop acts & musicians future and present, at all. It just mentions the video and the song for it with fleeting mentions of a few of the other songs and nothing about Billie Jean. It doesn't even mention about how Michael Jackson also combined various musical styles to create his sound and only labels it as an 'extension of the pop sound Motown was going for.' Not only that, but the book omits Off The Wall, Bad, and Dangerous. In fact, it doesn't mention anything about his career, at all. It doesn't even mention anything about the fact that Michael was responsible for getting black music on MTV and bridged the racial gap in radio. NOTHING. Anyone who grew up in the late 70s to early 90s remembers how huge that man's solo career was. It also omits the Jackson 5 completely.
Also, there's no mention of Janet Jackson and her contributions to new jack swing of the 90s. If this author can't even be bothered to do any real research or be somewhat accurate then why should I even be bothered to read it?
Don't bother with the book or take it with a grain of salt. Look for other books/articles, or better yet, just listen to the music yourself. You will learn a lot more. In fact, I would recommend Wikipedia over this.