From The New Yorker&;s fiercely original, Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic, a provocative collection of new and previously published essays arguing that we are what we watch.&;Emily Nussbaum is the perfect critic&;smart, engaging, funny, generous, and insightful.&;&;David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower MoonNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR &; Chicago Tribune &; Esquire &; Library Journal &; Kirkus Reviews From her creation of the &;Approval Matrix&; in New York magazine in 2004 to her Pulitzer Prize&;winning columns for The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum has argued for a new way of looking at TV. In this collection, including two never-before-published essays, Nussbaum writes about her passion for television, beginning with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the show that set her on a fresh intellectual path. She explores the rise of the female screw-up, how fans warp the shows they love, the messy power of sexual violence on TV, and the year that jokes helped elect a reality-television president. There are three big profiles of television showrunners&;Kenya Barris, Jenji Kohan, and Ryan Murphy&;as well as examinations of the legacies of Norman Lear and Joan Rivers. The book also includes a major new essay written during the year of #MeToo, wrestling with the question of what to do when the artist you love is a monster.More than a collection of reviews, the book makes a case for toppling the status anxiety that has long haunted the &;idiot box,&; even as it transformed. Through it all, Nussbaum recounts her fervent search, over fifteen years, for a new kind of criticism, one that resists the false hierarchy that elevates one kind of culture (violent, dramatic, gritty) over another (joyful, funny, stylized). I Like to Watch traces her own struggle to punch through stifling notions of &;prestige television,&; searching for a more expansive, more embracing vision of artistic ambition&;one that acknowledges many types of beauty and complexity and opens to more varied voices. It&;s a book that celebrates television as television, even as each year warps the definition of just what that might mean.FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY&;This collection, including some powerful new work, proves once and for all that there&;s no better American critic of anything than Emily Nussbaum. But I Like to Watch turns out to be even greater than the sum of its brilliant parts&;it&;s the most incisive, intimate, entertaining, authoritative guide to the shows of this golden television age.&;&;Kurt Andersen, author of Fantasyland&;Reading Emily Nussbaum makes us smarter not just about what we watch, but about how we live, what we love, and who we are. I Like to Watch is a joy.&;&;Rebecca Traister