How to Become Famous
Lost Einsteins, Forgotten Superstars, and How the Beatles Came to Be
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- ¥1,800
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Fame is like lightning. Taylor Swift, Bob Dylan, Leonardo da Vinci, Jane Austen, Oprah Winfrey—all of them were struck. Why? What if they hadn't been?
Consider the most famous music group in history. What would the world be like if the Beatles never existed? This was the question posed by the playful, thought-provoking, 2019 film Yesterday, in which a young, completely unknown singer starts performing Beatles hits to a world that has never heard them. Would the Fab Four's songs be as phenomenally popular as they are in our own Beatle-infused world? The movie asserts that they would, but is that true? Was the success of the Beatles inevitable due to their amazing, matchless talent?
Maybe. It's hard to imagine our world without its stars, icons, and celebrities. They are part of our culture and history, seeming permanent and preordained. But as Harvard law professor (and passionate Beatles fan) Cass Sunstein shows in this startling book, that is far from the case. Focusing on both famous and forgotten (or simply overlooked) artists and luminaries in music, literature, business, science, politics, and other fields, he explores why some individuals become famous and others don't and offers a new understanding of the roles played by greatness, luck, and contingency in the achievement of fame.
Sunstein examines recent research on informational cascades, network effects, and group polarization to probe the question of how people become famous. He explores what ends up in the history books and in the literary canon and how that changes radically over time. He delves into the rich and entertaining stories of a diverse cast of famous characters, from John Keats, William Blake, and Jane Austen to Bob Dylan, Ayn Rand, and Stan Lee—as well as John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
How to Become Famous takes you on a fun, captivating, and at times profound journey that will forever change your perspective on the latest celebrity's "fifteen minutes of fame" and on what vaults some to the top—and leaves others in the dust.
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This probing analysis from Sunstein (Decisions About Decisions) explores serendipity's role in determining why some thinkers, artists, and athletes hit the big time while others languish in obscurity. For instance, Sunstein recounts how after Muhammad Ali's bicycle was stolen when he was 12, the future champion reported the theft to a police officer who happened to run a boxing gym and recommended Ali try out the sport. Talent matters, but it's not sufficient to explain why some artists become famous, Sunstein argues, reporting that though 19th-century Scottish novelist Mary Brunton enjoyed greater acclaim in her lifetime than her contemporary Jane Austen, the former had no children whereas the latter's descendants were ceaseless champions of Austen's oeuvre and succeeded in posthumously boosting her profile. Elsewhere, Sunstein suggests that one of the factors that fueled Beatlemania in the 1960s was group polarization, which describes the tendency of individuals to become more enthusiastic in their opinions when around like-minded people. Sunstein's argument that circumstance rather than talent drives fame is well observed, though the plethora of case studies feels like overkill as Sunstein struggles to find new ways to elaborate on his thesis in the book's final stretch. It's a stimulating if overlong study of the vagaries of fame. Photos.
