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Will Storr

Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us Hardcover – March 27, 2018

by Will Storr (Author)

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We live in the age of the individual. Every day, we’re bombarded with depictions of the beautiful, successful, slim, socially conscious, and extroverted individual that our culture has decided is the perfect self, and we berate ourselves when we don’t measure up. This model of the perfect self and the impossibly high standards it sets can be extremely dangerous. People are suffering under the torture of this impossible fantasy, and unprecedented social pressure is leading to increases in depression and suicide. Journalist and novelist Will Storr began to wonder about this perfect self that torments so many of us: Where does this ideal come from? Why is it so powerful? Is there any way to break its spell? To answer these questions, Storr takes the reader on a journey from the shores of Ancient Greece, through the Christian Middle Ages, to the self-esteem evangelists of 1980s California, the rise of narcissism and the “selfie” generation, and right up to the era of hyper-individualism in which we live now. Selfie tells the epic tale of the person we all know so intimately―because it’s us.

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harry N. Abrams
Publication date

March 27, 2018
Dimensions

6.38 x 1.25 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10

1468315897
ISBN-13

978-1468315899
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“In this fascinating psychological and social history, Storr reveals how biology and culture conspire to keep us striving for perfection, and the devastating toll that can take.”
- The Washington Post

“An intriguing odyssey of self-discovery.”
- The New York Times Book Review

“Spoiler alert: Despite its trendy title, Selfie is not a frivolous book about taking photographs of oneself and littering social media with them, although this pastime is examined . . . Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It’s Doing to Us is an ambitious survey of the influences that make us who we are. In addition to his own experiences and insights, Storr draws on scholarly literature and interviews experts on the human personality. He ably synthesizes centuries of attitudes and beliefs about selfhood, primarily in western thought, from Aristotle, John Calvin and Freud, to Sartre, Ayn Rand and Steve Jobs. His straightforward prose and personal anecdotes make all of it eminently digestible. ”
- USA Today

“Smartphones and social media are turning us into dreadful narcissists. Would anyone care to dispute this? Yes, actually. His name is Will Storr . . . We’re missing the point when we complain about technologically induced egotism . . . The root problem, [Selfie] contends, isn’t our devices or our social media sites. It’s us. Or rather, it’s the civilization we’ve built, a culture that for many decades has encouraged ever greater degrees of self-regard. ”
- The Daily Beast

“[A] free ranging account of the modern, ego-driven Western self. . . . A corrective, and a much-needed one, to a moment fixated on its own particularity.”
- The New Republic

“It’s easy to look at Instagram and selfie-sticks and shake our heads at millennial narcissism. But Will Storr takes a longer view. He ignores the easy targets and instead tells the amazing 2,500-year story of how we’ve come to think about our selves. A top-notch journalist, historian, essayist, and sleuth, Storr has written an essential book for understanding, and coping with, the 21st century.”
- Nathan Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Nix

“This entertaining investigation is essentially a social history of the self, from earliest times (when we worked to increase our status within the tribe) to our current vainglorious self (hungry for likes and approbation on social media). Each of the seven chapters examines an aspect of self; for each of them, Storr, a lively, affable guide, introduces us to an exemplar, some familiar (Confucius, Ayn Rand, Donald Trump) and many more who are not. The final chapter offers Storr’s counsel on “How to Stay Alive in the Age of Perfectionism.” Step 1: try to set aside the current tribal propaganda and embrace your flawed and often unlikeable self. ”
- Toronto Star

“British journalist and novelist Storr takes on the ambitious subject of how people think of themselves. . . . The latest from the adroit, widely respected Storr. ”
- Booklist

“Storr continually delivers rich insights, historically grounded conclusions, and more contemporary deliberations on his subject’s relevance to the Trump campaign and how to stay hopeful living in a me-first world. Captivating, self-reflective research on our culture of rampant egocentricity.”
- Kirkus

“An ambitious argument . . . Storr is an electrifying analyst of Internet culture.”
- Financial Times

“An entertaining history of the self, from Narcissus to Trump.”
- Observer

“Thoughtful and engaging . . . Storr’s cultural history is fascinating.”
- Guardian

“A timely, inspiring book about self-obsession in modern life.”
- Harper's Bazaar

“Brilliant.”
- Independent

“Storr has done huge amounts of research for this book . . . he conveys it with a gifted lightness of touch.”
- The Times

“Eminently suitable for readers of both Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman, Selfie also has shades of Jon Ronson in its subversive humour and investigative spirit . . . Selfie, without being remotely fluffy, just might be the ultimate in post-truth comfort reading.”
- Bookseller, Editor’s Choice

“Captivating, self-reflective research on our culture of rampant egocentricity.”
- Kirkus

About the Author

Will Storr is an award-winning novelist and long-form journalist. He has reported from refugee camps in Africa, war-torn rural Colombia, and remote Aboriginal communities in Australia. He is a contributing editor at Esquire, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Observer, The Sunday Times, and The Guardian. In 2012, he was presented with the Amnesty International award for his work on sexual violence against men. In 2013, his BBC radio series won the AIB award for best investigative documentary. He is author of Selfie and The Unpersuadables(available from Overlook), Will Storr vs. The Supernatural and The Hunger and the Howling of Killian Lone.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harry N. Abrams; 1st edition (March 27, 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1468315897
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1468315899
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.45 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.38 x 1.25 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #870,456 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,451 in Medical Social Psychology & Interactions
- #2,447 in Popular Social Psychology & Interactions
- #4,337 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)

Customer Reviews:
391 ratings

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4.4 out of 5

391 global ratings

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4 star		21%
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Ira M. Edwards

Enlightening, but with two gaps

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 23, 2019

Verified Purchase

Coming from a culture (Iowa farm, 1930's) where conversation was polite and people cared for each other, I was not pleased with the frequent obscene language, mostly not needed to make the points. The various cultures described showed little caring and much competition, insults and aggression.
As a long-time student of human thinking, I was not surprised by the negative effect of pushing "self-esteem." I learned more about how elite academia can be cruel. I have seen it in my own higher education, but not the extremes Storr described.
First gap: The second largest "culture" in the world, an aggressive, intimidating religious-political world power that claims superiority of its people, based on unchangeable scripture, should have been included, though that would have brought much condemnation of the book. This left the book incomplete.
Second gap: Though Storr included a Christian group noted for self-hate, he did not include mine.
I follow Jesus. I don't need self-esteem, because I have Jesus-esteem. He regards me with wonderful value. I am a unique creation, with no other like me ever. My body is wonderfully made (as I saw in my study of medical biochemistry) and it is to be treated well. He fills me with compassion for suffering people. Working together, we accomplish much worldwide in relieving suffering and offering hope. We live with joy and love.
We are human, capable of all he evil that can be imagined, and every one of us has failed. We have also been forgiven, regenerated, and seek to live above those failures, in the here and now presence of our Living Lord.

11 people found this helpful

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TrotskysGirl

Took almost 300 pages to get to the point

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 8, 2019

Verified Purchase

I was looking forward to a book that focused on what the title said it was going to be about...our current trend of self obsession with the constant photo taking and competition on social media via photos and recording oneself in various locations to improve one's social cred with others. Instead this book ended up being a rambling, all over the place disjointed and tiresome affair. In one chapter he's talking about monks. In the next, Ayn Rand. Then we are treated to page after page of his experience at the Esalen retreat in California where silly hippy exercise are employed to uncover your true self, supposedly. Then, more wandering chapters about politics and neoliberalism. Maybe someone else could have used all of these elements more effectively to tie together how they all relate to "selfies" and the average Joe sitting at his computer wanting everyone to think he's cool. The concepts the author compiles together are not reader friendly and not particularly easy to see a relation to with one another or what (at least I thought) the book title was promising as the subject to be explored. The book just goes all over the place. I guess I personally didn't see why so much time had to be dedicated to all of these sort of out dated subjects, these relics of mid 20th century thought. I wanted to hear more about life in 2019. More about life NOW, and how our celphone culture and social media has ushered in a platform that has completely and so quickly warped the adult mind, sending it crashing back to jr,. high school. Barely a mention was made of any of this, and I dont even think Facebook was mentioned once.

That's what I wanted to hear about because that is what is going on NOW and part of my personal experience with this subject, not page after page of Ayn Rand and Esalen.

Anyway, I am sure there are better, more focused and enjoyable books about what is actually going on NOW. It took until about 280 pages for the author to even start talking about selfies. And again, the 280 page build up to the subject to me wasn't even a very good history of how we got here. I ended up skimming and then jumping pages...not good.

11 people found this helpful

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BobbyDart

Dense but insightful

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 23, 2018

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Selfie is an incredibly dense and information filled journey to a satisfying ending. Will Storr clearly did an immense amount of research for his latest book. Traveling through history he shows how various people and cultures have impacted the way we think and view ourselves. The journey has a lot of insight into the way we think.

However, as a mental health therapist and a Christian, much of his views are lacking in depth and understanding of the complexities of both topics. Throughout the book he mentions therapy and alludes to Christianity being a factor in the way we think. His simplified versions of both topics leads to misunderstandings of both topics. Both therapy and Christianity are meant to be messages of self-acceptance regardless of our imperfections which is not reflected in his writings. Much to his admission at the end of the book, Storr has a lot of knowledge on the subjects but little depth and it shows. Though, in my opinion it doesn't undermine his overarching message.

Regardless though, Storr concludes the book with a message of self-acceptance and hope. This message is definitely not aimed at accepting our strengths but rather accepting our limitations and weaknesses. Overall, whether or not you agree with his interpretations of certain topics, his underlying message is much needed in a time where perfectionism is the standard.

17 people found this helpful

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A.H. Derman

About as Deep as a Selfie

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 10, 2021

Verified Purchase

This book is a decent read and has some good points. Storr’s writing style is accommodating and vivid. He is clearly a compelling writer and the best use of this book is a starting point for introspection. However, he provides almost no deep, unique insight into our self-obsessed culture or its historical/sociological/psychological roots. His conclusions are regurgitated, casual and uncritical. While it’s obvious that he has done immense legwork to make this book work, he is more committed to the imagery he creates with words than any deep thought he might provoke with them. To quote Will Storr himself, “Most of the general concepts in this book are relatively uncontroversial and broadly accepted.” Bingo.

11 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Hande Z

We, the self

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 20, 2017

Verified Purchase

Will Storr is a delightful story teller. The theme of this book has been gaining currency in the past few years largely in connection with our reliance on technology and the age of digitalisation. Storr’s book focuses on the concept of our ‘self’ and how we have changed the way we conceptualise ourselves in this new age. He begins with a little history of our sense of self-worth and the trends in suicide. We are increasingly becoming ‘social perfectionists’, having greater, perhaps inflated, sense of our self and our capabilities as well as our responsibilities. But because Storr fuses interviews with relevant people, he points out that some, do not think that the problem lies in our becoming more social perfectionists but that it is our environment that is changing. He quotes Professor Gordon Flett: ‘In part, that’s because of the internet and the social media. First, when a public figure makes a mistake there seems to be a much stronger, more intense backlash. So kids growing up now see what happens to people who make a mistake and they’re very fearful of it.’

Storr examines the self in context. He seems to incline to the modern view that we are not the result of nature versus nature. He thinks nature and nurture are ‘not in competition, but in conspiracy’. He examines the fact that easterners and westerners do not just think about the world differently, but they actually see different worlds. Storr discusses the vanishing of the era of ‘character’ and the ‘arrival of the age of personality’.

His chapter on ‘The Digital Self’ digs into the acute problems we see in politics in the past couple of years and the rise of populism. ‘To many on the left, immersed in the shibboleths of identity politics, these were outrages appeals to old fashioned racism, so obviously abhorrent that surely no sensible people would be able to look past them. Yet different ears heard a different story. They heard change-making outsiders scorning the establishment. They heard brave rebels disparaging the smug and ‘politically correct’ educated class who routinely ignored them in favour of minorities and then patronized and insulted them when they complained.’

Some readers may find parts of the book a little rambling, some stories a little too long or disconnected, but that is the style of this book – weaving stories and interviews with Storr’s own ideas. A reader who is irked by this style may give this book a three-star review, but otherwise, the substance is lucid and full of information and insight.

42 people found this helpful

Amazonian Customer

Compelling, immersive and just a little horrifying

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 12, 2019

Verified Purchase

Selfie is a compelling and immersive investigation into the rise of the Western world's love of the self. Starting in Ancient Greece with Aristotle, Will Storr tracks the rise of our self regard and the equivalent fall of our belief in community and the common good.
It's always fascinating and highlights many things that I either knew nothing about or had never considered seriously before. More often than not is is also highly disturbing. He examines the Self Esteem movement that started in California (where else!). The belief is that many of society's ills such as alcoholism and unemployment are due to low self esteem and that by raising it in everybody we will create a society of well-balanced productive individuals. When backed up by some dodgy reporting of scientific research, this soon began to influence government policy in America and the UK. Unfortunately having self esteem that outstrips personal ability actually leads to narcissism and in turn to depression or violence and increasing suicide rates. He then links this to the self-serving neoliberalism so loved of Thatcher and Reagan; free markets, the reduction of state welfare, citizens redefined as consumers, the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer, and if you are one of the have-nots, then it's your own fault for being unenterprising. Depressing stuff that ultimately leads us to identity politics and the horrible mess we find ourselves in today where a repellent narcissist like Trump can become president.
As well as being an in-depth, well researched and absorbing piece of reporting, it is clearly also a personal journey - in places it's extremely candid as he bares his soul in situations he understandably finds very uncomfortable. Highly recommended.

7 people found this helpful

Michael

Worth reading but research biased

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 22, 2018

Verified Purchase

Storr writes extremely well, his book on the search for the self and the rise of narcissism in western culture is a good start. It is very easy to read and has huge number of facets, which some might regard as being overly rambling, drifting and lacking focus.
The book tells us that there is not just one self but there are many selves all vying for control, and I am unsure why storr does not elaborate on this as a route to narcissism; suppression of the nurturing, loving selves and over expression of the aggressive, critical parts which conspire with an overly narcissistic culture. He completely ignores Carl Jung, whose work focused on these architeypes and their role in our behavior, Jungian therapists believe that some of these architypes are suppressed as part of our upbringing and socialisation and it is the role of therapy to reintegrate them - what Jung callled individuation or becoming whole. Reintegration is therefore about getting the various architypes to work together, rather than competing. I believe that had Storr integrated this into his book the direction it took might have been somewhat different. There is an interesting section on neo-liberalism and Ayn Rand which I believe is extremely valuable.

6 people found this helpful

John Longstaff

Interesting...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 7, 2017

Verified Purchase

Interesting insight into how the western world has become so self obsessed. I bought it as I thought it might be useful for my teenage daughter but there was a fatalistic theme to it which I thought would be inappropriate for her. But for an adult, it was a well researched and interesting journey of discovery, uncovering some of the reasons why we are the way we are.

21 people found this helpful

Paula Grgich-Warke

An excellent potted history of modern culture

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 2, 2019

Verified Purchase

Full of information but written in compelling narrative form this book made clear the insidiously bad creeping feeling I was having about society and where it was taking us but weirdly made me feel better about myself. Exactly the opposite of what I expected. Well researched with enough personal insight to be interesting without self-indulgence, Storr is a gifted thinker and worth a read.

9 people found this helpful

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