How to Become a Scandal Adventures in Bad Behavior [Paperback]

ANew York Times Book ReviewEditors' Choice

We all relish a good scandal. Why do people feel compelled to act out their tangled psychodramas on the national stage, and why do we so enjoy watching them? The motifs are classicrevenge, betrayal, ambition, madnessthough the pitfalls are ones we all negotiate daily. After all, every one of us is a potential scandal in the making: failed self-knowledge and colossal self-deceptionthe necessary ingredientsare our collective plight.How to Become a Scandalis an extremely smart, funny, acid, and beautifully written meditation on a scary truth that we all try desperately to ignore (David Shields, author ofReality Hunger: A Manifesto).

Laura Kipnisis the author ofAgainst Love: A PolemicandThe Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability, which have been translated into fifteen languages. She is a professor in the Department of Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University, has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, and has contributed toSlate,Harper's,The Nation, andThe New York Times Magazine. She lives in New York and Chicago.

Scandal has never had it so good. . . InHow to Become a Scandal, Laura Kipnis delivers consumers of high and low culture that rare twofer, taking material that self-respecting people are supposed to resist and treating it with such smarts that the reader feels nothing short of enlightened. Her book is filled with sensational subjects, but Kipnis delivers all the thrills. The New York Times Book Review

A brilliant, funny take on our downfall-a-minute age. People

Informative and extremely witty. Chicago Tribune

Kipnis expertly rebuilds the tension of each case, unraveling the details of her subjects' downfalls so methodically that I held my breath&.She treats her subjects with great humanity and an empathetic there-bul3: