T he magazine writer Jonathan Van Meter profiles very famous people for extremely glossy publications. He was responsible for the notorious 1990 interview in which supermodel Linda Evangelista said she wouldn’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day, and in recent years, he has interviewed Taylor Swift, Michelle Obama and Lady Gaga for American Vogue. In 2019, he wrote a cover story, also for Vogue, on Kim Kardashian , the reality TV star turned businesswoman turned criminal justice activist, and one of the most famous women in the world. In the lengthy acknowledgments to this book, he describes receiving a phonecall from her after the piece had been published. “There’s no better feeling in the world than when someone gets you,” she told him. He replied by telling her that he was going to write a book about her, “whether you like it or not!”
Spoiler alert: she liked it. And the concept underlying the book can be justified: Kim Kardashian really has transformed celebrity culture.…
