Audience of One

New York Times Book Review **• Notable Book of the Year ** Washington Post **• 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2019 NPR.org • NPR 2019 Concierge **Slate **• 10 Best Books of the Year ** Chicago Tribune **• Best Books of the Year ** Publishers Weekly **• 10 Best Books of the Year** Audience of One **reframes America’s 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 America’s most powerful medium to become our forty-fifth president. In charting the seismic evolution of television from a monolithic mass medium into today’s 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.