Citizen Kim - by Jonathan Van Meter (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"We worked on it for five years together. I trust Jonathan. I read a copy and cried because I thought it was told so well in a way that I've never seen myself." --KIM KARDASHIAN on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

"Citizen Kim is the kind of intelligent and incisive book that comes along when a great journalist finds his perfect subject. Irresistible." --Anna Wintour

An unprecedented and intimate account of one of the most business-savvy, influential, and defining icons of our time

Kim Kardashian is a self-made mogul, social media genius, fashion icon, and unlikely advocate for criminal justice reform. But she is also dismissed as a figure of scandal, spectacle, and reality television. The truth is more complicated--and revealing.

Stylish, incisive, and deeply reported, Citizen Kim is a portrait of a woman we think we know. Born into an Armenian American family in Beverly Hills and marked early by proximity to tragedy and notoriety, Kim's sense of ambition was evident from the start. She rose from Paris Hilton's sidekick to tabloid fixation, reality-television star, and ultimately, the luminary of a new celebrity economy--an ascent that reveals how precisely she understood the culture she would come to create in her image.

Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with Kim and dozens of her closest friends, family members, and associates, the book is a symphonic portrait of a woman who comes sharply into focus as the major cultural currents of the past four decades--fame, technology, beauty, capital, family--take shape around her. Cutting through years of self-narration and relentless scrutiny, Jonathan Van Meter reveals a fascinating figure who has repeatedly transformed pressure and trauma into momentum. Equal parts cultural history, high-fashion chronicle, and intimate family study, Citizen Kim is a dazzling, whip-smart exploration of one of the most influential--and misunderstood--celebrities of our time, and the world that made her superstardom possible.

Review Quotes

Advance Praise for Citizen Kim

"I bear some responsibility for introducing Jonathan Van Meter to Kim Kardashian a decade ago, but what a result. Citizen Kim is the kind of intelligent and incisive book that comes along when a great journalist finds his perfect subject. Irresistible."
--Anna Wintour

"[Van Meter] brings a sharp, witty tone (at one point, he compares Lady Gaga, another former interview subject, to a "hairless cat") to his source material, but what mostly comes across is a deep, abiding respect for a woman who has taken countless setbacks, invasions, and humiliations and turned them into an empire. . . . The book is ultimately a rich page-turner reported from the eye of the hurricane, a dispatch from the life of the woman who made the social-media age in her own image."
--Cultured

"I've often wondered how someone like Kim Kardashian happens. Jonathan Van Meter brilliantly shows how fame, ambition, social media, and American-dream-flavored capitalism converged to make her seem inevitable. This is a wild Los Angeles story, full of fascinating cultural history, all serving the remarkable Bowerbird construction that is the Kardashian family."
--Aimee Mann

"Absolutely terrific. Jonathan Van Meter's Citizen Kim is an intimate, moving, alternately tragic and hilarious portrait of one of the most public figures on the planet. In his inimitable style--warm, wise, and filled with wonder--Van Meter invites us to curl up beside her on the sofa, to listen to her raucous tale of dreams, tragedies, and improbable triumph. In Van Meter's deft hands, Kim Kardashian's life becomes a twenty-first century Horatio Alger story--with a feminist core. It is as thrilling as it is inspirational."
--Mary Gabriel

"[Van Meter] is the kind of journalist who has the ability to take a celebrity subject, often someone who is as glamorous as they are deliciously tabloid, and pen an intelligent, fascinating and witty study of them which doubles as a deft analysis of the zeitgeist, of American culture, and of the current state of fame."
--Plum Sykes

About the Author

Jonathan Van Meter is one of America's foremost magazine writers. A contributing editor at both Vogue and New York, Van Meter writes about Hollywood, media, fashion, society, and politics, and has profiled many of the most consequential figures in American public life. He is also the creator and founding editor in chief of Vibe, owned in partnership by Quincy Jones and Time Warner; executive producer of the documentary Let's Get Frank; and author of The Last Good Time.