Selfie, Will Storr
Selfie, Will Storr
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Selfie
How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing To Us

Author: Will Storr

Narrator: Shaun Grindell

Unabridged: 12 hr 16 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/23/2018


Synopsis

We are living in an age of heightened individualism. Success is a personal responsibility. Our culture tells us that to succeed is to be slim, rich, happy, extroverted, popular—flawless. We have become self-obsessed. And our expectation of perfection comes at a cost. Millions are suffering under the torture of this impossible fantasy. The pressure to conform to this ideal has changed who we are.

It was not always like this. To explain how we got here, award-winning journalist Will Storr leads us on a "terrific tour through the history of self-obsession" (NPR, On Point) that explores the origins of this notion of the perfect self that torments so many of us: Where does this ideal come from? Why is it so powerful? Is there any way to break its spell?

Full of thrilling and unexpected connections among history, psychology, economics, neuroscience, and more, Selfie is an unforgettable book that makes sense of who we have become. Ranging from Ancient Greece, through the Christian Middle Ages, to the self-esteem evangelists of 1980s California, the rise of the "selfie" generation, and the era of hyper-individualism in which we live now, Selfie tells the epic tale of the person we all know so intimately—because it's us.

About Will Storr

Will Storr is an award-winning novelist and long-form journalist. He has reported from refugee camps in Africa, war-torn rural Colombia, and remote Aboriginal communities in Australia. He is a contributing editor at Esquire, and his work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Observer, the Sunday Times, and the Guardian. In 2012, he was presented with the Amnesty International award for his work on sexual violence against men. In 2013, his BBC radio series won the AIB award for best investigative documentary. He is author of Selfie and The Unpersuadables, Will Storr vs. The Supernatural and The Hunger and the Howling of Killian Lone.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Peter

Call me old-fashioned, but I miss the days when humility was regarded as a basic virtue, instead of the rampant narcissism that has invaded modern society. Ours is a generation addicted to Likes and Retweets, attempting to live up to an impossible ideal and in need of constant validation. This very......more

This is quite a read, an amalgam of several genres with varying degrees of success: ancient history and investigative journalism, pop psychology and memoir. I found it compelling, with strong storytelling, some great insights, and a number of elements I (uncomfortably) relate to. On the other hand,......more