Self-Made

Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians

Tara Isabella Burton

$55

Hardback

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English

Sceptre
25 October 2023

European history; Early modern history: c 1450 to c 1700; Social & cultural history; History of ideas

'We're all now self-makers, whether we like it or not - and this witty, sceptical book is the thought-provoking story of how we got here' GUARDIAN

'This funny, startling, insightful story of the selfie, from Durer to the Kardashians, is a must read if you want to understand how we reinvent ourselves every time we reveal ourselves' PETER POMERANTSEV

Today's defining celebrities have crafted public personae that walk the tightrope between authenticity and artificiality. Ordinary people now follow suit: lovingly tending our 'personal brands' for economic gain and self-expression alike.

Instagram culture is part of a story that goes back centuries. The vision that we not only can but should 'make' our own selves to shape our own destiny is an inextricable part of the formation of the modern world.

As traditional powers of pre-modernity - church and throne - waned, a new myth took their place: that of the 'self-made man', whose unique powers of personality - or canny self-presentation - give him not just the opportunity, but the obligation, to remake reality in the image of what he wants it to be.

From the Renaissance genius to the Regency dandy, the American prophets of capitalism to the aspirational ubermensch of European fascism, Hollywood's Golden Age to today's Silicon Valley, Self-Made takes us on a dazzling tour of modern history's most prominent self-makers, uncovering both self-making's liberatory power, and the dangers this idea can unleash.

'Both revelatory and a warning about the ways that focus on the self distorts our individual lives and the broader society' FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

By: Tara Isabella Burton
Imprint: Sceptre
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 236mm, Width: 162mm, Spine: 30mm
Weight: 490g
ISBN: 9781529364699
ISBN 10: 1529364698
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 25 October 2023
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Tara Isabella Burton is the author of Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World and the novels The World Cannot Give and Social Creature, which was a book of the year for the New York Times, Vulture, the Guardian and more. She regularly writes on religion, meaning-making, digital self-creation and the internet for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Aeon, The Economist's 1843, City Journal and more. She has a doctorate in theology from the University of Oxford.

Reviews for Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians

In the spirit of Kurt Andersen's Fantasyland and Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright Sided, Tara Isabella Burton delivers a fascinating intellectual and cultural history of our never-ending quest to reinvent ourselves. She masterfully balances high and low culture, ranging from Renaissance sculptors and Parisian Dandies, to American hucksters and Instagram selfies. Self-Made clears through the fog of our current moment and lets us see the methods behind our collective madness. An essential read for our era of Late-Stage Everything -- Jamie Wheal, author of <i>Recapture the Rapture</i> Self-Made takes the reader on an incredible journey that begins in the Renaissance and ends with the Kardashians, Donald Trump, and Silicon Valley's extropians, tracing the peculiarly modern phenomenon of people who make themselves the objects of their life's work. It is both revelatory and a warning about the ways that focus on the self distorts our individual lives and the broader society -- Francis Fukuyama, author of <i>The Origins of Political Order</i>