An unprecedented and intimate account of one of the most business-savvy, influential, and defining icons of our time

Kim Kardashian is a self-made mogul, social media genius, fashion icon, and unlikely advocate for criminal justice reform. But she is also dismissed as a figure of scandal, spectacle, and reality television. The truth is more complicated—and revealing.

Stylish, incisive, and deeply reported, Citizen Kim is a portrait of a woman we think we know. Born into an Armenian American family in Beverly Hills and marked early by proximity to tragedy and notoriety, Kim’s sense of ambition was evident from the start. She rose from Paris Hilton’s sidekick to tabloid fixation, reality-television star, and ultimately, the luminary of a new celebrity economy—an ascent that reveals how precisely she understood the culture she would come to create in her image.

Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with Kim and dozens of her closest friends, family members, and associates, the book is a symphonic portrait of a woman who comes sharply into focus as the major cultural currents of the past four decades—fame, technology, beauty, capital, family—take shape around her. Cutting through years of self-narration and relentless scrutiny, Jonathan Van Meter reveals a fascinating figure who has repeatedly transformed pressure and trauma into momentum. Equal parts cultural history, high-fashion chronicle, and intimate family study, Citizen Kim is a dazzling, whip-smart exploration of one of the most influential—and misunderstood—celebrities of our time, and the world that made her superstardom possible.