As a member of the staff of People magazine at its creation in 1974, Landon Y. Jones speaks with considerable authority on the subject of American celebrity culture. Jones turns a cold eye in Celebrity Nation on the "vast profit-generating enterprise we can think of as the celebrity-industrial complex" and how it has erased the line between those worthy of widespread recognition and the merely (and often undeservedly) famous.
In this slim primer, Jones (William Clark and the Shaping of the West) seeks the roots of American celebrity worship in 19th-century characters like Calamity Jane and draws a thread through her attention-seeking stunts to modern-day counterparts like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian. He's less assured when it comes to cause and effect, but with the rise of reality television and the ubiquity of social media, he's willing to lay at least some of the blame for the decline of citizens' civic engagement at the feet of celebrity obsession.
Jones seasons his more objective commentary with revealing memoir-like snippets, recalling his encounters with celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Diana, and his childhood idol, St. Louis baseball star Stan Musial, each of them an example of how society has moved from a "natural aristocracy of talent and charisma that establishes the value of fame" to an "aristocracy of numbers--the calculus of followers, likes, friends, and downloads." Others have--and will--explore this topic in more depth, but Jones's clear-eyed, often rueful take on the phenomenon is an excellent starting point. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer