The perfect last-minute gift Shop credit bundles

Coming soon

Pre-order as gift Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

Bad Friend

How Women Revolutionized Modern Friendship

by Tiffany Watt Smith

Narrator Tiffany Watt Smith

This audiobook uses AI narration.

We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more

Length TBA

Language English

Pre-order as gift Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

Summary
About the author
About the narrator

A smart and thought-provoking memoir, history, and cultural critique about the turmoil and complexity of female friendship

Our culture today is inundated with narratives about the strength of female friendship, whether through images of girl power, BFFs, or work wives. Yet cultural historian Tiffany Watt Smith has always found her own life much messier. She has had dramatic friend breakups, friendships that felt like too much or not enough, friendships that drifted into silence, and friendships built on convenience rather than a meeting of minds. And there are older cultural scripts to contend with: the competitive rival, the jealous backstabber, the underminer, the fair-weather friend.

We have all been bad friends. It’s impossible to be a perfect one; as Watt Smith points out, women’s friendships have long been magnified, scrutinized, praised, and admonished, creating a legacy of impossible ideals. In Bad Friend, Watt Smith reflects on her own experience and thoroughly mines the rich cultural history of female friendship to look for a new paradigm that might encompass the struggles along with the joy.

Biography & Memoir Family & Relationships Nonfiction Social Science

Tiffany Watt Smith is a cultural historian and author of The Book of Human Emotions and Schadenfreude. Her TED Talk, “The History of Human Emotions,” has been viewed more than 4.5 million times. She is associate professor (emerita) of cultural history at Queen Mary University of London, where she ran the Centre for the History of the Emotions. Her academic research has been supported by numerous awards and prizes, including from Wellcome Trust, the British Academy, and as a recipient of the distinguished Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2018. She is a BBC New Generation Thinker and in 2024 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.