Celebrity Nation: How America Evolved into a Culture of Fans and Followers

A former People magazine editor reveals how our cult of celebrity has shaped our politics, our culture, and our personal lives—for better or worse
From the writer and editor who coined the term “baby boomer” comes Celebrity Nation,an exploration into how and why fame no longer stems only from heroic achievements but from the number of “likes” and shares—and what this change means for American culture. Landon Jones—who spent decades in “celebrityland” only to emerge, like Alice, blinking in the sunlight—brings a personal and first-person perspective on fame and its dark underbelly, complicated even further by the arrival of the internet and social media.
Jones draws on his experience as the former managing editor of People magazine to bolster his account with profiles of celebrities he knew personally, ranging from Malcolm X to Princess Diana, as well as observations about...