SELF-MADE: Creating Our Identities from da Vinci to the Kardashians, by Tara Isabella BurtonThe Kardashians have sold so much to America — shapewear, cosmetics, beverage upon beverage — why not throw ideas onto the pile?
That highly contoured family pulls up like a caboose at the end of Tara Isabella Burton’s “Self-Made,” a fast-moving train of a book that visits a series of individuals in western history who have changed in ways major and minor the way people represent and think of themselves.
“Admirers thronged” to Brummell’s house, she recounts, to see an hourslong grooming process that included “exfoliation with a coarse-hair brush, followed by a bath of milk,” and spitting in a special silver bowl.
(And you thought Dior’s $40 lip oil was excessive.)
A novelist with a doctorate in theology from Oxford who has written widely on travel and religion, including for The New York Times, Burton is a confident conductor on this, an express voyage over several centuries, glossing an international lingo of self-determination: “sprezzatura” and “bon ton” and “Übermensch.”
Persons:
Tara Isabella Burton, America —, Tara Isabella Burton’s “, Burton, Kim, Beau Brummell, thronged ”, ”
Organizations:
Oxford, The New York Times
Locations:
da Vinci, America