In True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us, sociologist and TV-lover Danielle J. Lindemann takes a long, hard look in the “funhouse mirror” of this genre.
Reality TV, Lindemann argues, “uniquely reflects our everyday experiences and social topography back to us,” said a review on goodreads.com.
Applying scholarly research—including studies of inequality, culture, and deviance—to specific shows, Lindemann layers sharp insights with social theory, humor, pop cultural references, and anecdotes from her own life to show us who we really are.
“By taking reality TV seriously, True Story argues, we can better understand key institutions — like families, schools, and prisons — and broad social constructs such as gender, race and class,” said the review.
“At once an entertaining chronicle of reality TV obsession and a pioneering work of sociology, True Story holds up a mirror to our society: the reflection may not always be pretty—but we can’t look away.”
True Story includes an index, a bibliography, endnotes, and information about the author in a section at the end of the book, and within the book.
