Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed And What It's Doing To Us

Product Description

Fascinating' Guardian Brilliant' Evening Standard Electrifying' Financial Times So interesting I literally couldn't put it down' Sunday Times We live in the age of the individual We are supposed to be slim prosperous happy extroverted & popular This is our culture's image of the perfect self We see this person everywhere in advertising in the press all over social media We're told that to be this person you just have to follow your dreams that our potential is limitless that we are the source of our own success But this model of the perfect self can be extremely dangerous People are suffering under the torture of this impossible fantasy Unprecedented social pressure is leading to increases in depression & suicide Where does this ideal come from? Why is it so powerful? Is there any way to break its spell? To answer these questions Selfie by Will Storr takes us from the shores of Ancient Greece through the Christian Middle Ages to the self-esteem evangelists of 1980s California the rise of narcissism & the selfie generation & right up to the era of hyper-individualistic neoliberalism in which we live now It tells the extraordinary story of the person we all know so intimately
- our self As featured on Russell Brand's Under The Skin podcast