I was attracted to this collection of essays when I read a piece by the author in some publication and found out that she and I share a heritage, though not the same generation. This is a collection of her non-fiction writings which all touch upon the idea of the tension between appearance and reality in various settings: religion, social customs, social networks, reality television, politics, and and so forth. Despite the subtitle, quite a bit of the trickery is imposed by powerful external entities, not generated internally within the individual. For the most part the author concentrates on the recent past after 1990 or so to comment on how this divergence has increased its hold on popular culture. It goes against the plain-talking, straight-shooting American ideal we have long held. The most grotesque manifestation came in the person of Donald Trump whose power was always his ability to manipulate his image to disguise his actual intentions.

Of all the essays, the one where she describes her brief stint in reality television was the most memorable for me. She expresses her observations and opinions in all the pieces forcefully, but is not unaware of the sneaky tendency toward deception to avoid applying reality checks to the views she herself espouses. She even questions the nature of who she really is as a person now and then, which I admire. I take it, however, that not everyone is a fan of her as a pundit and that the publications she works for have also had their detractors. Part of it goes along with the job of a critic. But since I didn't know about the substance of these going in to reading this book, I was kind of a naive latecomer among her readers.

The author reads her audiobook herself, and does a good job of it I thought.