Screen People
How We Entertained Ourselves into a State of Emergency
Will be published approx. on 21. April 2026
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-1-0354-3045-1 (ISBN)
Description
From America's reality-TV-star-cum-ex-president to our expertly curated Instagram feeds, it's never been less clear what's real and what's been simply fabricated for our entertainment.
SCREEN PEOPLE is a deep dive into what happens when we cede our reality to spectacle. Garber explains how the internet-inflected culture of the present moment conditions us, every day, to see each other less as people than as characters in an ongoing show, and how some of our most chronic and harmful social conditions - loneliness, depression, mistrust, misinformation, cynicism - stem from our demand for diversion.
In ten chapters, each themed around an element of stagecraft - from 'The Producers', who edit our reality, to 'The Props', the strangers we turn into objects of our amusement, all the way through to 'the Haters', the worshipful QAnon-types who expect the prophecies of their anonymous leader to play out on live TV - Garber builds toward an argument as urgent as it is ironic: our fun is quickly becoming our emergency. And we can't understand our politics without first understanding our culture.
Part critical investigation, part manifesto, part fan's diary, SCREEN PEOPLE will be an eye-opening journey into the cultural underbelly of our present malaise.
SCREEN PEOPLE is a deep dive into what happens when we cede our reality to spectacle. Garber explains how the internet-inflected culture of the present moment conditions us, every day, to see each other less as people than as characters in an ongoing show, and how some of our most chronic and harmful social conditions - loneliness, depression, mistrust, misinformation, cynicism - stem from our demand for diversion.
In ten chapters, each themed around an element of stagecraft - from 'The Producers', who edit our reality, to 'The Props', the strangers we turn into objects of our amusement, all the way through to 'the Haters', the worshipful QAnon-types who expect the prophecies of their anonymous leader to play out on live TV - Garber builds toward an argument as urgent as it is ironic: our fun is quickly becoming our emergency. And we can't understand our politics without first understanding our culture.
Part critical investigation, part manifesto, part fan's diary, SCREEN PEOPLE will be an eye-opening journey into the cultural underbelly of our present malaise.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Headline Publishing Group
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Trade binding
Dimensions
Height: 165 mm
Width: 243 mm
Thickness: 32 mm
Weight
500 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-0354-3045-1 (9781035430451)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
04/2026
Wildfire
€14.99
Available for download
Person
Megan Garber is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is the recipient of a Mirror Award for her writing about the media and a fellowship from the New America Foundation, and she previously worked as a reporter for the Nieman Journalism Lab, as well as a critic for the Columbia Journalism Review. At The Atlantic, she writes about the intersection of politics and culture (which often, but not always, means that she writes about reality TV). She is the author of On Misdirection: Magic, Mayhem, American Politics. She lives in Washington, DC.