On The Future of Wagnerism: Art, Intoxication, Addiction, Codependence and Recovery is the sequel to Lawrence Mass’s memoir, Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite: Being Gay and Jewish in America. Together, they form a narrative of consciousness and experience in the author’s life as a gay Jewish man, as a physician, and as a writer. Via the trajectory of his own struggles with and specialist work in addiction, Mass explores interfaces of culture, social tolerance, health and spirituality. How do such seemingly disparate phenomena as Wagnerism and AIDS, and such different figures as Richard Wagner and Larry Kramer, come to reflect on one another and the ways we live now? As we attempt to navigate an uncertain course in our voyage forward, On the Future of Wagnerism inspires us to glimpse broadening horizons. from the Introduction by Adam J. Sacks: "It is the interweaving of minority experience, the political impact of music, and perspectives of addiction that distinguishes this book and renders it a unique document of our time...An important contribution to literature on the legacy of Nazism and the Holocaust, On The Future of Wagnerism provides a visceral but subtle cri de coeur, a call to us to come out of our complacency, to reposition our assumptions and reckon anew with false idols that retain their ability to intoxicate."