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The jaw-dropping story of Instagram influencer and wellness scammer Belle Gibson, whose cancer diagnosis and cure was all a lie.
NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES STARRING KAITLYN DEVER
Entrepreneur. Inspiration. Guru. Australian wellness influencer Belle Gibson shot to fame after she convinced the world she had cured her terminal brain cancer with just a healthy diet. But there was one problem: she lied--she'd never had cancer.
Gibson, a high school dropout and teenage mother, built a global business in less than eighteen months that vaulted her to fame and fortune. She had 200,000 Instagram followers from Melbourne to Los Angeles to London, international book deals, and a best-selling smartphone app, having fooled both Penguin Books and Apple. She was a digital-age celebrity, a one-woman cult, a hero of the "wellness" world, and an inspiration to many.
Written by the two journalists who assiduously uncovered the details of Gibson's lies, The Woman Who Fooled the World unravels the mystery and motivation behind this deception. It follows the public reaction to the scandal, which included headlines in Time magazine and Gibson being named as a top-ten villain of the year by The Washington Post.
The Woman Who Fooled the World also explores the lure of alternative cancer treatments, the cottage industry flourishing behind the wellness movement, and the rise of social media. It documents not only Gibson's folly but the devastating impact this con had on hers fans and on people suffering from cancer.
Show moreThe jaw-dropping story of Instagram influencer and wellness scammer Belle Gibson, whose cancer diagnosis and cure was all a lie.
NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES STARRING KAITLYN DEVER
Entrepreneur. Inspiration. Guru. Australian wellness influencer Belle Gibson shot to fame after she convinced the world she had cured her terminal brain cancer with just a healthy diet. But there was one problem: she lied--she'd never had cancer.
Gibson, a high school dropout and teenage mother, built a global business in less than eighteen months that vaulted her to fame and fortune. She had 200,000 Instagram followers from Melbourne to Los Angeles to London, international book deals, and a best-selling smartphone app, having fooled both Penguin Books and Apple. She was a digital-age celebrity, a one-woman cult, a hero of the "wellness" world, and an inspiration to many.
Written by the two journalists who assiduously uncovered the details of Gibson's lies, The Woman Who Fooled the World unravels the mystery and motivation behind this deception. It follows the public reaction to the scandal, which included headlines in Time magazine and Gibson being named as a top-ten villain of the year by The Washington Post.
The Woman Who Fooled the World also explores the lure of alternative cancer treatments, the cottage industry flourishing behind the wellness movement, and the rise of social media. It documents not only Gibson's folly but the devastating impact this con had on hers fans and on people suffering from cancer.
Show moreBeau Donelly is a multi-award-winning journalist who covered social affairs for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. His news-breaking and investigative skills have been recognised by the United Nations and the Melbourne Press Club. Donelly has been awarded for an exposé on illegal brothels, coverage of clergy sex-abuse trials, and reporting on disability issues. He has also been a finalist for Australian journalism's highest honour, the Walkley Award. Donelly has a Bachelor of Journalism from Monash University, and is based in Europe. Nick Toscano is a multi-award-winning journalist based in Melbourne, who specialises in federal politics, business workplace relations, and the labour movement for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He has been awarded the the Grant Hattam Quill for Investigative Journalism, and has twice received the highest honour in Australian journalism, the Walkley Award, for exposing the country's biggest-ever underpayment scandal. Toscano has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne and a Masters in Journalism from RMIT.
"This fascinating and thoroughly reported tale will have readers
casting a gimlet eye on both the wellness industry and social
media."
--Publishers Weekly "The Woman Who Fooled the World is a
fascinating character study that will appeal to true-crime
fans."
--Booklist "The Woman Who Fooled the World isn't just a detonating
exposé, but a forensically researched, compulsively readable and
frequently staggering behind-the-scenes account of an unravelling
on an operative scale. It'll also restore your faith in
journalism's ability to uncover the truth and expose it to
light."
--Benjamin Law, author of Gaysia and The Family Law "It gives me
great pleasure that this story has been told in such a compelling
and readable way, as this surely means that it will reach the wide
audience it deserves to. Not only does The Woman Who Fooled the
World detail the sordid story of a young woman lying her way to
fame and fortune, it also savagely exposes the wellness industry
that enabled her rise. Although Belle Gibson has now been exposed,
this brilliant book reveals how many others were complicit and
culpable. I hope they are all thoroughly ashamed, and that this
book serves as a powerful reminder, helping to ensure that this
sort of deception is never allowed to happen again."
--Anthony Warner, The Angry Chef "Meticulously researched and
elegantly composed, The Woman Who Fooled The World is a
journalistic detective story for the smart-phone age. Donelly and
Toscano not only chart con artist Belle Gibson's rise to global
acclaim and her crashing fall, they explore and explain modern
society's willingness to believe in anyone, or anything, that
offers hope of beating what is perhaps our greatest collective
fear: cancer. For me, the book reaches its highest point when we
hear from genuine cancer sufferers who believed in Gibson. Their
honesty about their fears and uncertain futures counter balances
the bullshit of Gibson and her profit-minded enablers. Donelly and
Toscano give a master class in old-fashioned investigative
journalism and a reminder of its potency and importance."
--Richard Baker, investigative journalist, The Age "The Woman Who
Fooled the World is a balanced and authoritative account of
Gibson's career...essential reading for anyone seeking an
understanding of how so many people could have fallen for her
pernicious lies."
--Simon Caterson, Irish Independent "A salutary tale for our social
media times."
--The Sunday Times "The Woman Who Fooled the World bracingly
retells a memorable chapter in the history of human folly."
--Sunday Business Post "The book's main lesson is how easy it is,
in this age of social-media-driven "fake news", to dupe the public.
It's also an excoriating attack on the charlatanism of "wellness
warriors"."
-The Mail on Sunday "[I] couldn't recommend it more. It not only
forensically dissects the mind and actions of this modern fraud but
cuts to the core of the growing unhealthy abuse of lifestyle and
wellness by modern media and social media."
--Dr Robert O'Connor, Head of Research at the Irish Cancer Society
"Thoroughly researched, well written, entirely engrossing
journalistic account of a badly executed fraud that took advantage
of incredibly vulnerable people in a lot of pain, physically and
mentally, and how it all came crumbling down, with plenty of
relevant and fascinating segues into history and the cults/culture
of healing."
--Rennie Sweeney, "What's Nonfiction?"
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