Cue the Sun!
By Emily Nussbaum
- Genre
- Art, Culture & Creative Life
- Publisher
- Random House (Penguin Random House)
- Publication year
- 2024
- ISBN
- 9780525508991
Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV is a work of narrative nonfiction by the Pulitzer-winning critic Emily Nussbaum, published by Random House in June 2024. It chronicles the history of reality television through extensive interviews. It was an Andrew Carnegie Medal finalist and a best...
Reality television is easy to sneer at and hard to escape, and Emily Nussbaum takes it seriously enough to write its origin story. Cue the Sun! traces the genre from Candid Camera and An American Family through The Real World, Survivor and The Apprentice, drawing on hundreds of interviews with the producers, editors and participants who built it. The Pulitzer-winning critic is neither snob nor apologist; she is fascinated by the form's ethical murk - the manipulation, the exploitation, the strange authenticity that leaks through anyway - and by how a disreputable genre came to shape politics and culture at large. intendle recommends it as definitive, gossipy and genuinely revelatory social history. An Andrew Carnegie Medal finalist and a best book of 2024 at the NYT Book Review and NPR, it treats reality TV as the mirror of American life it has quietly become. You will never watch a confessional booth the same way again.