Purchase

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Books-A-Million

Indie BookShop

Add to Wish List

Also by Laura Kipnis:

How to Become a Scandal, September 2010
Hardcover

HOW TO BECOME A SCANDAL
By: Laura Kipnis

Adventures in Bad Behavior

Metropolis Books
September 2010
On Sale: August 31, 2010
224 pages
ISBN: 0805089799
EAN: 9780805089790
Hardcover
Add to Wish List

Non-Fiction

We all relish a good scandal—the larger the figure (governor, judge) and more shocking the particulars (diapers, cigars)—the better. But why do people feel compelled to act out their tangled psychodramas on the national stage, and why do we so enjoy watching them, hurling our condemnations while savoring every lurid detail?

With "pointed daggers of prose" (The New Yorker), Laura Kipnis examines contemporary downfall sagas to lay bare the American psyche: what we desire, what we punish, and what we disavow. She delivers virtuoso analyses of four paradigmatic cases: a lovelorn astronaut, an unhinged judge, a venomous whistleblower, and an over-imaginative memoirist. The motifs are classic—revenge, betrayal, ambition, madness—though the pitfalls are ones we all negotiate daily. After all, every one of us is a potential scandal in the making: failed self-knowledge and colossal self-deception—the necessary ingredients—are our collective plight. In How to Become a Scandal, bad behavior is the entry point for a brilliant cultural romp as well as an anti-civics lesson. "Shove your rules," says scandal, and no doubt every upright citizen, deep within, cheers the transgression—as long as it's someone else's head on the block.

Media Buzz

All Things Considered - August 26, 2010