The new book Waiting for Britney Spears: A True Story, Allegedly by Jeff Weiss is actually a reboot. The first time around, it was called Dante’s Inferno. As with Dante, Waiting for Britney Spears is a trip to hell. Unlike Dante’s wailing of lost souls, hypocrites walking in an endless line, and Satan stuck in a lake of ice, Weiss encounters tabloid journalists, editors with a conscience, and out-of-control celebrities.

In 1998, Weiss was unemployed. A gifted writer, he had dreams of a literary life. Desperate for work, he took what was supposed to be a temporary gig for Nova, a tabloid magazine that tracked down celebrities. His way in was that Britney Spears’s video for her 1998 smash “Baby One More Time” had been filmed at his high school, an event Weiss describes as “a cluster bomb filled with candy.”