Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America

New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the YearWashington Post 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2019NPR.org NPR 2019 ConciergeSlate 10 Best Books of the YearChicago Tribune Best Books of the YearPublishers Weekly 10 Best Books of the YearAudience of One reframes Americas identity through the rattled mind of an insomniac, cable-news-junkie president.New York Times chief television critic James Poniewozik offers a darkly entertaining (Carlos Lozada, Washington Post) history of mass media from the early 1980s to today, demonstrating how a volcanic, camera-hogging antihero merged with Americas most powerful medium to become our forty-fifth president. In charting the seismic evolution of television from a monolithic mass medium into todays fractious confederation of spite-and-insult media subcultures, Poniewozik reveals how Donald Trump took advantage of these historic changes by constantly reinventing himself: from a boastful cartoon zillionaire; to 1990s self-parodic sitcom fixture; to The Apprentice reality-TV star; and finally to Twitter-mad, culture-warring demagogue. Already lauded as a brilliant and daring (Annalisa Quinn, NPR) work that defines a generation, Audience of One emerges as a classic in cultural criticism.