Celebrity

In this book, the author examines the meaning of celebrity. Drawing on a wide gallery of celebrities, from O.J. Simpson, Marilyn Monroe, David Bowie and Kurt Cobain to such notorious figures as Timothy McVeigh, Ted Bundy and the Soho bomber, David Copeland, he explores the friction between the public face of the celebrity and the celebrity’s actual self. He argues that ascribed celebrity, which derives from bloodline, has been comprehensively replaced by achieved celebrity, the result of personal achievement, and he situates this development in the emergence of public life as a distinct sphere of society.