In this very funny and readable book, Ronson takes a look at public shaming. He researches public shaming methods of the 18th century, you know, where people would be locked in the stockades and publicly whipped. Then he compares it with the way people's lives are publicly ruined by the harsh judgement of twitter users nowadays.

Ronson claims that Twitter has led to the democratization of justice, ushering in a golden age of public shaming. You’ve heard of street justice, well this is Tweet justice! Throughout the book, he meets up with and interviews several people who were publicly shamed, to see how the shaming has affected their lives.

What Ronson finds is that though it sometimes achieves a good outcome for society, for the most part, the price these people had to pay for their transgressions far exceeds the severity of their crimes. Shame, as it turns out, is one of the most corrosive and mortifying things that can happen to a person.

Along the way Ronson debunks Zimbardo and Lebon, visits prison rehabilitation centres, and makes compulsive liars andplagiarists like Jonah Lehrer, sympathetic. I thought it was funny how hard Ronson came down on pop science writers, considering he's a pop psychology writer.

At any rate, it was a really fun, thoughtful examination of shame.