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

Tara Isabella Burton

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'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

'A fast-moving train of a book'

NEW YORK TIMES

'Gripping'

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

'Funny, startling . . . a must read'

PETER POMERANTSEV, author of This Is Not Propaganda

'Revelatory'

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, author of The Origins of Political Order

As the forces of social media and capitalism collide, cultivating our 'personal brands' has become the norm. But this phenomenon is not new: Instagram culture is part of a story that goes back centuries.

From the Renaissance genius to the Regency dandy, Hollywood's Golden Age to today's Silicon Valley and reality TV stars, 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.

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

  • Thoughtful, beautifully written . . . Philosophical, ethical and pragmatic by turns, Burton urgently interrogates the culturally dominant myths of individualism and self-realisationRanging from Aristotle to OnlyFans by way of the Marquis de Sade and Frederick Douglass, Tara Isabella Burton delights, infuriates and instructs while offering some of the sharpest and most insightful social commentary being written today

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Tara Isabella Burton

Tara Isabella Burton

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.

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