Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are

How it reads

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are is narrative nonfiction (popular science, specifically), and its dominant mood is adventurous. It's driven by momentum, discovery and getting into trouble. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.

It's set in an international setting, in the present day, told in the first person by a single narrator. Its central concerns are identity, class and society and power and politics. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending resolves happily. At 338 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.