Author Talk with Cass Sunstein

Fame is like lightning. Taylor Swift, Bob Dylan, Leonardo da Vinci, Oprah Winfrey--all of them were struck. Why? What if they hadn’t been? It’s hard to imagine our world without its stars, icons, and celebrities. But as Harvard law professor (and passionate Beatles fan) Cass Sunstein shows in this startling book, their fame was far from inevitable. Focusing on both famous and forgotten artists and luminaries, he explores why some individuals become famous and others don’t and offers a new understanding of the roles played by greatness, luck, and contingency in the achievement of fame.

Sunstein examines recent research on informational cascades, network effects, and group polarization to probe the question of how people become famous. He explores what ends up in the history books and how that changes radically over time. He delves into entertaining stories of a diverse cast of famous characters, from John Keats, William Blake, and Jane Austen to Bob Dylan, Ayn Rand, and Stan Lee--as well as John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

CASS R. SUNSTEIN is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School. From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He is the author of Nudge (with Richard H. Thaler), Noise (with Daniel Kahneman and Olivier Sibony), and The World According to Star Wars (with Reid Hastie).

Host or Publisher The Harvard / MIT Coop