Fame Junkies（ISBN=9780618918713）

　　Why do more people watch American Idol than the nightly news? What is it about Paris Hilton’s dating life that is so intriguing? Why do teenage girls when given the option of “pressing a magic button and becoming either stronger, smarter, famous, or more beautiful” predominantly opt for fame? In this entertaining and enlightening book, Jake Halpern explores the fascinating and often dark implications of America’s obsession with fame. He travels to a Hollywood home for aspiring child actors and enrolls in a training program for aspiring celebrity assistants. He visits the offices of Us Weekly and a laboratory where monkeys give up food to stare at pictures of dominant members of their group. The book culminates in Halpern’s encounter with Rod Stewart’s biggest fan, a woman from Pittsburgh who nominated the singer for Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. Fame Junkies reveals how psychology, technology, and even evolution conspire to make the world of red carpets and velvet ropes so enthralling to all of us on the outside looking in.

　　Born in 1975 in Buffalo, New York, JAKE HALPERN attended Yale University. He has written for the New Republic, Commonwealth, the Jerusalem Report, and other magazines. Unlike the people in this book, he comes from a family with a long tradition of leaving places: his great-grandmother immigrated to America, returned home to Hungary, then immigrated to America once again. His grandfather was so desperate to get out of New York that he took a job chipping paint on a giant freighter bound for California via the Panama Canal. Jake Halpern has lived in New Haven, Prague, London, Tel Aviv, Washington, D.C., and India. For now, he lives in New Haven, CT. Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski can be visited at
www.worldofdormia.com.