Authenticity: Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life - Softcover

Boyle, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007140169 ISBN 13: 9780007140169

Publisher: Flamingo, 2003

Synopsis

‘Getting Real’ is the next big thing in Western living – the determined rejection of the fake, the virtual, the spun and the mass-produced, in the search for authenticity. There's a revolution going on and (however unconsciously) we're all already part of it. Welcome to the New Realism.

The charms of the global and virtual future we were all brought up to expect, where meals would be eaten in the form of pills and machines would do all our work, have worn rather thin. It's not that we don't want all the advantages of progress –we do– we just want a future that manages to be local and real too.

Tracking the struggle for reality from Japanese theme parks to mock-Tudor villas and from Byron to Big Brother, Authenticity explains where our reactions against spin and fakeness come from – and where they are going. The current revival of real food, real business, real culture flies in the face of expert opinion from politicians, economists, advertisers and big business – and they're having to run to keep up as our hype attention-span gets ever shorter.

Optimistic, witty, highly thought-provoking and packed with fascinating stories, Boyle's search yokes a series of opposites – computer games and communities, Elizabeth David and Peter Pan, organic chocolate and virtual reality, hip-hop and spin-doctors, a total eclipse of the sun and Neil Armstrong, Milli Vanilli and downsizing – and makes us see them afresh. Asking whether coolness is dead, how real reality is and whether realpolitik can ever change into real politics, he puts authenticity firmly on the map, lifting the lid on all the other symptoms of this powerful new phenomenon – revealing the unexpected force that looks set to change all our lives.

About this title

Review:

Time Out – 3 September 2003
"Boyle's is a beguiling vision of hope for the future and many readers will agree with most of what he has to say."

Financial Times – 6 September 2003
"Authenticity has always been seeping out of our lives....and yet.. [it] has a habit of fighting back. David Boyle walks the front lines of the way between real and fake."

Daily Telegraph – 2 August 2003
"[Boyle] joins a long line, from Plato to Keynes, who argue that our view of reality, whether the figurative shadows on a cave wall, or the numbers called on a trading floor, is a speculative froth that distracts us from a superior reality."

The Independent – 29 July 2003
"... an insightful, ambitious argument."

Management Today – August 2003
"A book beginning here could easily be another polemic against consumer capitalism, superficial politics and the influence of a cynical media. Though Boyle criticises all three, his argument is subtler than bestselling broadsides like Naomi Klein's No Logo or Michael Moore's Stupid White Men... The guts of the argument are that we need to find a new set of relationships between democracy, individualism and capitalism... its wide range, well-written examples and lively style offer something for us all."

Manchester Evening News – 2 August 2003
"What is most pleasing about this book is that it actually offers a way out. After hurtling through a world of falsehood, Boyle delivers 20 steps that anyone can take in order to minimilise the fake world. It is a book that helps you to keep it real."

The Big Issue – 4 August 2003
"Authenticity...chronicles our cultural backlash against a world increasingly plugged as 'virtual', and attempts to decode what real really means."

The Scotsman – 9 August 2003
"... a bold attempt to pull together a thousand strands of modern nostalgia and unease and present them as a unified whole."

Praise for The Tyranny of Numbers
‘A great antidote to cynicism and sharply witty reminder of what is important in life.’ Independent

About the Author:

David Boyle is the author of Funny Money and The Tyranny of Numbers. Editor of New Economics since 1988, he has also edited a range of other publications. David Boyle is a Fellow of the RSA and a well-known figure in organisations such as the New Economics Foundation. He has been a Winston Churchill Fellow and is a regular broadcaster on the future of money, cities, economics and now – reality.

About this edition

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0007140169
• ISBN 13: 9780007140169
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336