Jia Tolentino has the best job: to experience culture, the arts, the personal, the political. And then she gets to tell us about it. To read Tolentino is to expand your world.

NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER FromThe New Yorkersbeloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television.Esquire

Book Club Pick forNowReadThis, fromPBSNewsHourandThe New York TimesA whip-smart, challenging book.Zadie Smith Jia Tolentino could be the Joan Didion of our time.Vulture

FINALIST FORTHENATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLES JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY ANDHARVARD CRIMSONAND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYThe New York Times Book ReviewTimeChicago TribuneThe Washington Post NPR VarietyEsquireVoxElleGlamourGQGood HousekeepingThe Paris ReviewPasteTown & CountryBookPageKirkus ReviewsBookRiotShelf Awareness

Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity.

Trick Mirroris an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly through a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroines journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die. Gleaming with Tolentinos sense of humor and capacity to elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant, and marked by her desire to treat the reader with profound honesty,Trick Mirroris an instant classic of the worst decade yet.

FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY