First published 2024
Nellie Bowles thought she belonged perfectly in San Francisco. She voted for Hillary Clinton, worked at the New York Times, and frequented local gay bars with friends who shared her progressive views. Then she began asking uncomfortable questions about whether their movement actually helped people. Her colleagues warned her she was choosing the wrong side of history. Instead of backing down, Bowles did what reporters do best: she investigated. She enrolled in courses about toxic whiteness, shadowed social justice activists running Abolitionist Entertainment LLC, and navigated the demands of the Times's disinformation czar. What she discovered was stranger and more absurd than she anticipated. The political movement she once embraced had transformed into something unrecognizable, filled with comic contradictions and performative excess. Through her journey from insider to skeptical observer, Bowles captures a moment when educated Americans lost their grip on reality and she nearly did too.
Genres: american-fiction, political-science, contemporary, 21st-century, journalism, activism
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: disillusionment, fish-out-of-water, insider-outsider
Setting: San Francisco, New York
Period: 21st-century
272 pages · Hardcover · Thesis