Entertainment History

Kenneth Turan discovered film as a child left undisturbed to watch Million Dollar Movie on WOR-TV Channel 9 in New York, a daily showcase for older Hollywood features. It was then that he developed a love of cinema that never left him and honed his eye for the most acute details and the grandest of scenes. Not to Be Missed blends cultural criticism, historical anecdotes, and inside-Hollywood controversy. Turan's selection of favorites ranges across all genres.

Charlotte Mullins brings art to life through the stories of those who created it and, importantly, reframes who is included in the narrative to create a more diverse and exciting landscape of art. She shows how art can help us see the world differently and understand our place in it, how it helps us express ourselves, fuels our creativity, and contributes to our overall wellbeing and positive mental health.

Mel Brooks' own words telling all about the players, the filming, and studio antics during the production of this great comedy classic. The audiobook is alive and teeming with hundreds of photos, original interviews, and hilarious commentary. Young Frankenstein was made with deep respect for the craft and history of cinema-and for the power of a good schwanzstucker joke. This audiobook will also rely on interviews with gifted director of photography Gerald Hirschfeld, Academy Award-winning actress Cloris Leachman, and veteran producer Michael Gruskoff.

Thirty years ago, Chuck Berry starred in the seminal music documentary Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock 'N' Roll, which profiled the legend during a star-studded concert celebrating his 60th birthday. Now comes the complete story behind one of America's most enduring and embattled icons. Compiled as an oral history by the film's producer, Stephanie Bennett, Johnny B. Bad combines interviews from the film's participants, including its music director - Keith Richards. These unique interviews and accounts paint a vivid and multifaceted picture of the artist.

Nearly 20 years in the making, Can't Buy Me Love is a masterful work of group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism. That the Beatles were an unprecedented phenomenon is a given. Here Jonathan Gould seeks to explain why, placing the Fab Four in the broad and tumultuous panorama of their time and place, rooting their story in the social context that girded both their rise and their demise.

For all the near-fanatic attention brought each year to the Academy Awards, the organization that dispenses those awards—the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—has yet to be understood. To date, no one has ever produced a thorough account of the Academy’s birth and its awkward adolescence, and the few reports on those periods from outside have always had a glancing, cursory quality. Yet the story of the Academy’s creation and development is a critical piece of Hollywood’s history. Now that story is finally being told.

An unflinching confrontation of humanity’s dark side, Brian De Palma’s crime drama film Scarface gave rise to a cultural revolution upon its release in 1983. Its impact was unprecedented, making globe-spanning waves as a defining portrait of the gritty Miami street life. From Al Pacino’s masterful characterization of Tony Montana to the iconic “Say hello to my little friend,” Scarface maintains its reputation as an unwavering game changer in cult classic cinema.

When he retired as the chief security officer of New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, John Barelli had spent the better part of 40 years responsible not only for one of the richest treasure troves on the planet, but the museum's staff, the millions of visitors, as well as American presidents, royalty, and heads of state from around the world. For the first time, John Barelli shares his experiences of the crimes that occurred on his watch, the investigations that captured thieves and recovered artwork....

The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was forty-four years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained to produce a body of radical, abstract works the likes of which had never been seen before. Today, it is widely accepted that af Klint was one of the earliest abstract academic painters in Europe. But this is only part of her story. Not only was she a working female artist, she was also an avowed clairvoyant and mystic.

Here is the epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967 - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Dolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde - and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood and America forever.

In this new audiobook, broadcaster and music writer Alan Cross narrates the definitive history of Pearl Jam. Cross succeeds once again in revealing the fascinating history behind the music in the same compelling way we've come to expect from his long broadcasting career.

One Way Out is the powerful biography of the Allman Brothers Band, an oral history written with the band's participation and filled with original, never-before-published interviews as well as personal letters and correspondence. This is the most in-depth look at a legendary American rock band that has meant so much to so many for so long. For 25 years, Alan Paul has covered the Allman Brothers Band, conducting hundreds of interviews, riding the buses with them, attending rehearsals and countless shows.

As a kid growing up in New York in the late '50s, Bill Apter fell in love with professional wrestling, and it wasn't long before he was rubbing shoulders with the greats as a young reporter and photographer. He's since become the world's best-known wrestling magazine personality, and he's had professional and personal relationships with a who's who of the business, like Triple H, Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Sting, and Ric Flair.

Dark City expands with new chapters and a fresh collection of restored photos that illustrate the mythic landscape of the imagination. It's a place where the men and women who created film noir often find themselves dangling from the same sinister heights as the silver-screen avatars to whom they gave life.

For millennia, the sacred drummers of pre-Christian Mediterranean and western Asia were women. In this inspiring book, Layne Redmond, herself a renowned drummer, tells their history.

Music journalists Dean Budnick and Josh Baron chronicle the behind-the-scenes history of the modern concert industry. Filled with entertaining rock-and-roll anecdotes about The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam, and more - and charting the emergence of players like Ticketmaster, StubHub, Live Nation, and Outbox - Ticket Masters will transfix every concertgoer who wonders just where the price of admission really goes. This edition has an updated epilogue that covers recent industry developments.

On August 5th, 2003, Ryan Atwood found himself a long way from his home in Chino—he was in The O.C., an exclusive suburb full of beautiful girls, wealthy bullies, corrupt real-estate tycoons, and a new family helmed by his public defender, Sandy Cohen. Ryan soon warms up to his nerdy, indie band-loving new best friend Seth, and quickly falls for Marissa, the stunning girl next door who has secrets of her own. Completing the group is Summer, Seth’s dream girl and Marissa’s loyal—and fearless—best friend.

In March 2022, Michael Palin travelled the length of the River Tigris through Iraq to get a sense of what life is like in a region of the world that once formed the cradle of civilisation, but that in recent times has witnessed turmoil and appalling bloodshed. It was a journey of sharp, often brutal contrasts. At one moment he would be exploring the old streets of Baghdad or the ancient ruins of Babylon. At the next he would be visiting the war-torn city of Mosul, or learning about the horrific Speicher massacre in Tikrit.

Kenneth Clark was the grandest figure in the arts in Britain in the 20th century. Museum director, patron, pioneer of television, cultural panjandrum, he effortlessly dominated the art world for over half a century. Clark belonged to that stratum of society that used to be called "the top people" and was befriended by both the Queen Mother and Winston Churchill. His closest friendships, however, were amongst writers and artists, men such as John Betjeman, Graham Sutherland, Henry Moore and John Piper.

Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions and instead celebrate the mainstream assimilators who borrowed innovations, diluted their impact, and disguised their sources. In Music: A Subversive History, Ted Gioia reclaims the story of music for the riffraff, insurgents, and provocateurs. Gioia tells a 4,000-year history of music as a global source of power, change, and upheaval.