‘F*cking With Reality’: Inside the Rise of TV’s Guiltiest Pleasure

Fair or not, “reality television” is still that grungy catch-all term, television’s version of Circus Circus compared to “Prestige TV’s” Bellagio. Circus Circus survives in Las Vegas by serving a specific audience, and the hustling, striving, lying, scheming stars and creators of reality programming do the same.

And no book has better illuminated more than eight decades of the groundbreaking genre’s fun...