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Preamble

Dancing with the Stars

By Lewis H. Lapham

The vanity of princes is an old story; so is the wish for kings and the gazing into the pool of Narcissus.

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Portrait of Orson Welles for Citizen Kane, 1940.

Essay

Against Appearances

By Bruce Bawer

Orson Welles became a star not by creating some great work, but by simply scaring the hell out of people.

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Essay

Consumer Products

By Stephen Marche

Celebrity culture may seem ahistorical, but its roots reach deeply into the past four hundred years.

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Essay

Vanishing Act

By Paul Collins

Barbara Newhall Follett was a prodigy who transfixed the literary world—and then vanished.

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The Coronation of the Emperor and Empress, 2 December 1804

Essay

Gilgamesh to Gaga

By John Tresch

Fame machines have always found ways to conjure up and emanate glory, to magnify the power of kings and gods.

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Painting of a reclining man in a turban

Essay

A Public Man

By Andrew McConnell Stott

The sheer gravitational weight of Lord Byron’s fame had the power to distort everything around it.

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Photograph of P.T. Barnum., 1855-1865.

Essay

Hatching Monsters

By Charles Baxter

Lessons in fame from P.T. Barnum’s autobiography.

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