Overview

"A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice We all relish a good scandal. Why do people feel compelled to act out their tangled psychodramas on the national stage, and why do we so enjoy watching them? The motifs are classic--revenge, betrayal, ambition, madness--though the pitfalls are ones we all negotiate daily. After all, every one of us is a potential scandal in the making: failed self-knowledge and colossal self-deception--the necessary ingredients--are our collective plight. How to Become a Scandal is ""an extremely smart, funny, acid, and beautifully written meditation on a scary truth that we all try desperately to ignore"" (David Shields, author of Reality Hunger: A Manifesto)."

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9780312610579

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Reviews

Scandal has never had it so good. . . In How to Become a Scandal, Laura Kipnis delivers consumers of high and low culture that rare twofer, taking material that self-respecting people are supposed to resist and treating it with such smarts that the reader feels nothing short of enlightened. Her book is filled with sensational subjects, but Kipnis delivers all the thrills. -- The New York Times Book Review A brilliant, funny take on our downfall-a-minute age. -- People Magazine <br> Informative and extremely witty. -- Chicago Tribune <br> Kipnis expertly rebuilds the tension of each case, unraveling the details of her subjects' downfalls so methodically that I held my breath....She treats her subjects with great humanity and an empathetic there-but-for-the-grace-of-God reverence. -- The Washington Post <br> A must-read for anyone unable to look away from another's fall from grace. . . . Reading her clever book is like sitting in a front-row seat at Scandal Theory 10

A brilliant, funny take on our downfall-a-minute age. <br>&#8212; People Magazine &#160; A must-read for anyone unable to look away from another&#8217;s fall from grace. . . . Reading her clever book is like sitting in a front-row seat at Scandal Theory 101&#8212;and serves as a cautionary tale for those tiptoeing on the edges of indignity. . . . How to Become a Scandal is as transfixing and engrossing as the tremendously chaotic tales she recounts with exacting detail. &#8212;Tina Brown, Editor-in-Chief, The Daily Beast &#160; Thought-provoking examination of scandals past and present. . . with the benefit of this provocative book, we can now understand why [scandals] will continue as long as human society exists. <br>&#8212; The Buffalo News <br> A deliciously flippant tone serves the reader the juicy details we savor so about scandal, while tossing in some timeless questions and speculations about the deeper meaning of it all. This is a dead serious book that's an utter lark to

Author Information

Laura Kipnis is the author of Against Love: A Polemic and The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability, which have been translated into fifteen languages. She is a professor in the Department of Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University, has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, and has contributed to Slate, Harper's, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine. She lives in New York and Chicago.

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