"From her creation of the first 'Approval Matrix' in New York magazine in 2004 to her Pulitzer Prize-winning columns for The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum has known all along that what we watch is who we are. In this collection, including several substantive, never-before-published essays, Nussbaum writes about her passion for television beginning with Buffy--as she writes, a show that was so much more than its critical assessment--the evolution of female...

"We hear everywhere that we are in a golden era of television. Prestige dramas are the stars of streaming services and cable networks alike, luring viewers into binge watching hours of programming with writing, production values, and acting talent typically associated with feature-length films. In Second Lives, Michael Szalay focuses our attention on a highly influential subset of prestige television that he calls the black-market drama, and he tethers...