About this item
The rollicking saga of reality television - an ambitious cultural history of America's most influential, most divisive artistic phenomenon, from the Pulitzer Prize winning New Yorker writer. Who invented reality TV, the world's most dangerous pop culture genre? And why can't we look away from it? In this revelatory, deeply reported account of the rise of "dirty documentary" - from its controversial radio roots to the birth of Bravo and the emergence of a reality television President - Emily Nussbaum unearths the surprising origin story of the genre that ate the world, as told through the lively voices of the people who created it. At once gimlet-eyed and empathetic, Cue The Sun! explores the morally charged, funny and sometimes tragic consequences of the hunt for something real inside something fake.
About the Author
Emily Nussbaum is the television critic for The New Yorker. In 2016, she won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. She previously worked as a writer and editor at New York Magazine, where she created the notorious charticle The Approval Matrix. She's also written for the New York Times, Slate and Lingua Franca, among other publications. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband Clive Thompson and her two kids. She hates Top Ten lists.