True Story
What Reality TV Says About Us
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Narrated by:
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Libby McKnight
About this listen
Named a Best Nonfiction Book of 2022 by Esquire
A sociological study of reality TV that explores its rise as a culture-dominating medium—and what the genre reveals about our attitudes toward race, gender, class, and sexuality.
What do we see when we watch reality television?
In True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us, the sociologist and TV lover Danielle J. Lindemann takes a long, hard look in the “funhouse mirror” of this genre, from countless rose ceremonies on The Bachelor to the White House and more (so much more!). Beginning with the first episodes of The Real World, reality TV has not only remade our entertainment and cultural landscape—it also uniquely refracts our everyday experiences and social topography.
By taking reality TV seriously, we can better understand key institutions (such as families, schools, and prisons) and broad social categories (such as gender, race, class, and sexuality). These shows have the ability to unveil the major circuits of power that organize our lives and the extent to which our own realities are, in fact, socially constructed.
Whether we’re watching conniving Survivor contestants or three-year-old beauty queens, these “guilty pleasures” underscore how conservative our society remains, and how steadfastly we cling to our notions about what counts as legitimate or “real.” At once an entertaining chronicle of reality TV obsession and a pioneering work of sociology, True Story reflects our society back to us: what we see in the looking glass may not always be pretty, but we can’t stop watching.
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Forget "Having It All"
- How America Messed Up Motherhood - and How to Fix It
- By: Amy Westervelt
- Narrated by: Amy Westervelt
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In Forget "Having It All", Westervelt traces the roots of our modern expectations of mothers and motherhood back to extremist ideas held by the first Puritans who attempted to colonize America and examines how those ideals shifted - or didn't - through every generation since.
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A Thorough and Well-Researched Book on The "Mom Predicament"
- By Merle B on 04-10-19
By: Amy Westervelt
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All the Single Ladies
- Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation
- By: Rebecca Traister
- Narrated by: Candace Thaxton, Rebecca Traister - introduction
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In a provocative, groundbreaking work, National Magazine Award finalist Rebecca Traister, "the most brilliant voice on feminism in this country" (Anne Lamott), traces the history of unmarried women in America who, through social, political, and economic means, have radically shaped our nation.
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Excellent book, destroyed by narration
- By Theresa Holleran on 03-06-16
By: Rebecca Traister
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What Love Is
- And What It Could Be
- By: Carrie Jenkins
- Narrated by: Carrie Jenkins
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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What is love? Aside from being the title of many a popular love song, this is one of life's perennial questions. In What Love Is, philosopher Carrie Jenkins offers a bold new theory on the nature of romantic love that reconciles its humanistic and scientific components.
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What Philosophy Is and What It Could Be
- By Amazon Customer on 03-09-17
By: Carrie Jenkins
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Generation Me
- Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - and More Miserable Than Ever Before
- By: Jean M. Twenge PhD
- Narrated by: Randye Kaye
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In this provocative new book, psychologist and social commentator Dr. Jean Twenge documents the self-focus of what she calls "Generation Me" - people born in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Dr. Twenge explores why her generation is tolerant, confident, open-minded, and ambitious but also cynical, depressed, lonely, and anxious. Dr. Twenge reveals how profoundly different today's young adults are - and makes controversial predictions about what the future holds for them and society as a whole.
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I mostly agree
- By David Hill on 05-25-20
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Cinderella Ate My Daughter
- Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture
- By: Peggy Orenstein
- Narrated by: Peggy Orenstein
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Pink and pretty or predatory and hardened, sexualized girlhood influences our daughters from infancy onward, telling them that how a girl looks matters more than who she is. Somewhere between the exhilarating rise of Girl Power in the 1990s and today, the pursuit of physical perfection has been recast as a source - the source - of female empowerment. And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever-younger ages.
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No solution just worry
- By Marie on 06-28-12
By: Peggy Orenstein
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Turned On
- Science, Sex and Robots
- By: Kate Devlin
- Narrated by: Kate Devlin
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Sexual activity is central to our very existence; it shapes how we think, how we act and how we live. With advances in technology come machines that may one day think independently. What will happen to us when we form close relationships with these intelligent systems? Sex robots are here and here to stay, and more are coming. This audiobook explores how the emerging and future development of sexual companion robots might affect us and the society in which we live. It explores the social changes arising from emerging technologies and our relationships with the machines that may someday care for us and about us.
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Nuanced, Smart, and Compassionate
- By Karen on 01-20-19
By: Kate Devlin
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The End of Men
- And the Rise of Women
- By: Hanna Rosin
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Men have been the dominant sex since - well, the dawn of mankind. And yet, as journalist Hanna Rosin discovered, that long-held truth is no longer true. At this unprecedented moment, women are no longer merely gaining on men; they have pulled decisively ahead by almost every measure. Already "the end of men" - the phrase Rosin coined - has entered the lexicon as indelibly as Simone de Beauvoir’s "second sex", Betty Friedan’s "feminine mystique", Susan Faludi’s "backlash", and Naomi Wolf’s "beauty myth" have.
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Great book, don't care for the reader's style
- By Darren on 12-05-12
By: Hanna Rosin
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Bet on Black
- The Good News About Being Black in America Today
- By: Eboni K. Williams
- Narrated by: Eboni K. Williams
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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When The Real Housewives of New York City hired its first black cast member after more than 13 years on the air, attorney, speaker, and journalist Eboni K. Williams knew that the public would consider her a diversity hire. But instead of accepting the label, Williams re-envisioned her role as a “Diversity Higher,” an opportunity to prove the significance of Black excellence in the workspace and in society at-large. In this book, she shares all the benefits and advantages that have helped her and many others historically reach great heights in their careers and beyond.
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Bet On Black…thank you, thank you, thank you!
- By amina mack on 07-15-24
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Cool
- How the Brain's Hidden Quest for Cool Drives Our Economy and Shapes Our World
- By: Steven Quartz, Anette Asp
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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In Cool, the neuroscientist and philosopher Steven Quartz and the political scientist Anette Asp bring together the latest findings in brain science, economics, and evolutionary biology to form a provocative theory of consumerism, revealing how the brain's "social calculator" and an instinct to rebel are the crucial missing links in understanding the motivations behind our spending habits.
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Some Useful Ideas
- By Carson on 07-20-17
By: Steven Quartz, and others
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Angry White Men
- American Masculinity at the End of an Era
- By: Michael Kimmel
- Narrated by: Aaron Williamson
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the enduring legacies of the 2012 Presidential campaign was the demise of the white American male voter as a dominant force in the political landscape. On election night, after Obama was announced the winner, a distressed Bill O'Reilly lamented that he didn't live in "a traditional America anymore". He was joined by others who bellowed their grief on the talk radio airwaves, the traditional redoubt of angry white men. Why were they so angry?
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Interesting book; Wrong reader
- By Carolina A. Miranda on 05-02-18
By: Michael Kimmel
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Covering
- The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights
- By: Kenji Yoshino
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Everyone covers. To cover is to downplay a disfavored trait so as to blend into the mainstream. Because all of us possess stigmatized attributes, we all encounter pressure to cover in our daily lives. Given its pervasiveness, we may experience this pressure to be a simple fact of social life. Against conventional understanding, Kenji Yoshino argues that the demand to cover can pose a hidden threat to our civil rights.
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Humane Advocacy in Law and Life
- By Patroclus Menoetius on 07-27-20
By: Kenji Yoshino
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An African American and Latinx History of the United States
- By: Paul Ortiz
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Spanning more than 200 years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress, and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms American history into the story of the working class organizing against imperialism.
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I had to return
- By Andrew Alvarez on 05-19-20
By: Paul Ortiz
What listeners say about True Story
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Angie
- 06-01-24
I opening insight into history, bias, and reality TV
Read this book for a book club. Surprisingly I enjoyed this very much. I learned a lot about reality TV and how it gives us a glimpse of our culture, our beliefs as a society, and reflects our history as a nation. I have to say, I will not be watching reality TV in the same lines any longer. I had to say that the narrator sounded to me a lot like Siri.
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- CCZ
- 10-27-24
some interesting ideas
the narrator mispronounce common names and words. some of the conclusions seemed specious and far flung as well.
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- Jeffrey M Ouimette
- 04-06-23
Entertaining
Very insightful but no real thesis. A fun way to look at reality tv for those of us who are fans.
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