Selfie

Will Storr

22 March 2018
9781447283669
416 pages

Synopsis

‘Fascinating’ Guardian
‘Brilliant’ Evening Standard
‘Electrifying’ Financial Times
‘So interesting I literally couldn’t put it down’ Sunday Times


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.

The pressure to conform to this ideal has changed who we are. We have become self-obsessed. And our expectation of perfection comes at a cost. Millions are suffering under the torture of this impossible fantasy.

It was not always like this. To explain how we got here, Will Storr takes us on a journey across continents and centuries. Full of thrilling and unexpected connections between history, psychology, economics, neuroscience and more, Selfie is an unforgettable book that makes sense of who we have become.

Far more ambitious than its title might suggest . . . Selfie illuminates much of what feels peculiar about the world in 2017 . . . Storr has put in a formidable amount of work, he is irascibly good company, and he has something approaching genius for marshalling his material . . . This could be a pessimistic book. In fact, its insights are timely and welcome
As entertaining as it is provocative and disquieting . . . His breezy prose is bedded down in intensive research, much of it immersive . . . his closing thoughts can’t help but be comforting
Storr has done huge amounts of research for this book . . . he conveys it with a gifted lightness of touch that is wry and funny (his investigative mode has been compared to those of Jon Ronson and Louis Theroux, with which I wouldn’t disagree) . . . entertaining . . . fascinating