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Susan Bordo's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Susan Bordo recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Susan Bordo's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

The Complete Maus

Combined for the first time here are Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II - the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the horror of the Holocaust through cartoons, the author captures the everyday reality of fear and is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of survival - and how the children of survivors are in their own way affected by the trials of their parents. A contemporary classic of immeasurable significance. less
Recommended by Susan Bordo, and 1 others.

Susan BordoIt’s about the Holocaust. It’s also a comic book, in which the various characters are depicted as animals – the Jews as mice, the Nazis as cats. (Source)

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2

On Photography

First published in 1973, this is a study of the force of photographic images which are continually inserted between experience and reality. Sontag develops further the concept of 'transparency'. When anything can be photographed and photography has destroyed the boundaries and definitions of art, a viewer can approach a photograph freely with no expectations of discovering what it means. This collection of six lucid and invigorating essays, the most famous being "In Plato's Cave", make up a deep exploration of how the image has affected society. less
Recommended by Susan Bordo, and 1 others.

Susan BordoSontag was the first to make the claim, which at the time was very controversial, that photography is misleading and seductive because it looks like reality but is in fact highly selective. (Source)

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3
First published in 1962, this wonderfully provocative book introduced the notion of “pseudo-events”—events such as press conferences and presidential debates, which are manufactured solely in order to be reported—and the contemporary definition of celebrity as “a person who is known for his well-knownness.” Since then Daniel J. Boorstin’s prophetic vision of an America inundated by its own illusions has become an essential resource for any reader who wants to distinguish the manifold deceptions of our culture from its few enduring truths.

Cover design by Matt Dorfman.
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Recommended by Susan Bordo, Dave Elitch, and 2 others.

Susan BordoA pseudo-event is something that acquires its reality and power not because it is based on fact, but simply because the media has reported it. (Source)

Dave Elitch[Dave Elitch recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)

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4
Media critic Douglas deconstructs the ambiguous messages sent to American women via TV programs, popular music, advertising, and nightly news reporting over the last 40 years, and fathoms their influence on her own life and the lives of her contemporaries. Photos. less
Recommended by Susan Bordo, and 1 others.

Susan BordoThis is about a particular generation of women growing up in postwar America, and the impact popular media had on their lives, both for good and for bad. (Source)

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5

The Age of Movies

Selected Writings

"Film criticism is exciting just because there is no formula to apply," Pauline Kael once observed, "just because you must use everything you are and everything you know." Between 1968 and 1991, as regular film reviewer for The New Yorker, Kael used those formidable tools to shape the tastes of a generation, enthralling readers with her gift for capturing, with force and fluency, the essence of an actor's gesture or the full implication of a cinematic image. Kael called movies "the most total and encompassing art form we have," and she made her reviews a platform for considering both... more
Recommended by Susan Bordo, and 1 others.

Susan BordoKael brought to her movie reviews a combination of the visceral and the intellectual that I found absolutely delicious. (Source)

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