Cue The Sun!
Consider this your invitation to read and discuss narrative nonfiction with us! In the Narrative Nonfiction Book Club we will be reading across the genres of nonfiction, from history to adventure, memoir/biography, and beyond with books that read like a novel.
Join us on Saturday, August 2nd at 11am in the Hermann room as we discuss our latest book pick, 2025 Andrew Carnegie Finalist, Cue The Sun! The Invention of Reality TV by Emily Nussbaum.
This book club is free to the public and copies of the book are available at the adult service desk one month prior to our book club meeting. To register to attend, CLICK HERE.
Cue the Sun! Synopsis:
“The rollicking saga of reality television – an ambitious cultural history of America’s most influential, most divisive artistic phenomenon, from the Pulitzer Prize – winning New Yorker writer.
Who invented reality television, the world’s most dangerous pop-culture genre? Any why can’t we look away? In this revelatory, deeply reported account of the rise of “dirty documentary” – from its contentions roots in radio to the ascent of Donald Trump – Emily Nussbaum unearths the origin story of the genre that ate the world, as told through the lively voices of the people who built it. At once gimlet-eyed and empathetic, Cue the Sun! explores the morally charged, funny, and sometimes tragic consequences of the hunt for something real inside something fake.
A shrewd observer who adores television, Nussbaum is the ideal voice for the first substantive history of the genre that, for better or worse, made America what it is today.”
About the Author:
“Emily Nussbaum is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she’s worked since 2011, originally as the magazine’s television critic. In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Previously, she was the culture editor for New York, where she created the Approval Matrix. She is also the author of I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution, which was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Clive Thompson, and their two children.”