Entertainment History

Acclaimed biographer Donald Spoto explores the roots of Hitchcock’s obsessions - with food, murder, and idealized love, among others - and traces the origins of his incomparable, bizarre genius, from his childhood and education to the golden years of his career. Based on interviews with his writers, actors, and longtime associates, and on exhaustive research, The Dark Side of Genius is the definitive biography of Alfred Hitchcock.

In the late Fifties and Sixties, iconoclastic young rebels in Chicago opened two tiny theaters—The Compass and The Second City—where they satirized politics, religion, and sex. Developing scenes by improvising based on audience suggestions turned out to be a fine way to develop great actors, directors, and writers. Alumni went on to create such groundbreaking works as The Graduate, Groundhog Day, and Don't Look Up. Many of them also became stars on Saturday Night Live. Something Wonderful Right Away features the pioneers who founded the empire that transformed American comedy.

With unforgettable performances such as Moses in The Ten Commandments, the anguished astronaut George Taylor in 1968's Planet of the Apes, and the eponymous Ben-Hur - for which he won an Academy Award - Charlton Heston cemented his place in the pantheon of 20th-century Hollywood royalty. But his fame as an actor was matched by his political activism. A Democrat in his early years, Heston became a staunch supporter of Richard Nixon and Reagan Republicanism.

Dazed and Confused not only heralded the arrival of filmmaker Richard Linklater, it introduced a cast of unknowns who would become the next generation of movie stars. Embraced as a cultural touchstone, the 1993 film would also make Matthew McConaughey’s famous phrase - alright, alright, alright - ubiquitous. But it started with a simple idea: Linklater thought people might like to watch a movie about high school kids just hanging out and listening to music on the last day of school in 1976.

For almost a century, movie fans have been riveted by the Academy Awards and the stars who have won Oscars. 50 Oscar Nights takes listeners behind the scenes of Hollywood’s most storied awards show through new and exclusive interviews with dozens of A-list actors, filmmakers, and craftspeople spanning sixty years of the Oscars. Here these artists reflect on their winning work and recount all the details of how they got ready, how they felt when they heard their name and got up on stage to accept their award, what they wore, how the entire experience impacted their life, and more.

A groundbreaking book exploring the breadth of history of recorded music by and for the LGBT community and how those records influenced the evolution of the music we listen to today. From Sia to Elton John, from Billie Holiday to David Bowie, LGBT musicians have changed the course of modern music. But before their music - and the messages behind it - gained understanding and a place in the mainstream, how did the queer musicians of yesteryear fight to build foundations for those who would follow them?

In the second of four volumes, Alan Cross reveals the fascinating stories behind the music, focusing on the following top performers: Joy Division, New Order, The Cure, Depeche Mode, U2, Brian Eno, Skinny Puppy, and The Pixies.

Despite dogged attempts by musicologists worldwide to find its source, the violin’s origins remain maddeningly elusive. The instrument surfaced from nowhere in particular, in a world that Columbus had only recently left behind and Shakespeare had yet to put on paper. By the end of the violin’s first century, people were just discovering its possibilities. But it was already the instrument of choice for some of the greatest music ever composed by the end of its second. By the dawn of its fifth, it was established on five continents as an icon of globalization, modernization, and social mobility, an A-list trophy, and a potential capital gain.

Throughout history, across cultures and countries, silk has reigned as the undeniable queen of fabrics, yet its origins and evolution remain a mystery. In a gorgeous and sweeping narrative, Silk weaves together its intricate story and the indelible mark it has left on humanity.

Jean Renoir's career almost spans the history years of cinema - from the early silent movies, to the naturalism of the talkies, committed cinema, film noir, Hollywood studio productions, the Technicolor-period comedies and fast television techniques. His film The Grand Illusion remains one of the greatest movies about the effects of war.

While many volumes devoted to the punk and hardcore scenes in America grace bookstore shelves, Canada’s contributions to the genre remain largely unacknowledged. For the first time, the birth of Canadian punk - a transformative cultural force that spread across the country at the end of the 1970s - is captured between the pages of this important resource. Delving deeper than standard band biographies, this book articulates how the advent of punk reshaped the culture of cities across Canada, speeding along the creation of alternative means of cultural production, consumption, and distribution.

In this widely praised book, Annik LaFarge presents a very different Frédéric Chopin from the melancholy, sickly, Romantic figure that has predominated for so long. The artist she discovered is, instead, a purely independent - and endlessly relevant - spirit: an innovator who created a new musical language; an autodidact who became a spiritually generous, trailblazing teacher; a stalwart patriot during a time of revolution, pandemic, and exile.

From 1935 to 1939, the Federal Theatre Project staged over a thousand productions in 29 states that were seen by thirty million (or nearly one in four) Americans, two thirds of whom had never seen a play before. At its helm was an unassuming theater professor, Hallie Flanagan. It employed, at its peak, over twelve thousand struggling artists, some of whom, like Orson Welles and Arthur Miller, would soon be famous, but most of whom were just ordinary people eager to work again at their craft. The Playbook takes us through some of its most remarkable productions.

How is a handmade fabric helping save an ancient forest? Why is a famous fabric pattern from India best known by the name of a Scottish town? How is a Chinese dragon robe a diagram of the whole universe? What is the difference between how the Greek Fates and the Viking Norns used threads to tell our destiny? In Fabric, bestselling author Victoria Finlay spins us round the globe, weaving stories of our relationship with cloth and asking how and why people through the ages have made it, worn it, invented it, and made symbols out of it. And sometimes why they have fought for it.

For seven decades Katharine Hepburn played a leading role in the popular culture of the 20th century, reigning as an admired actress, a beloved movie star, and a treasured icon of the modern American woman. She also remained one of the most private of all the public figures of her time.

While the Western was dying a slow death across the cultural landscape, it was blazing back to life as a video game in the early twenty-first century. Rockstar Games' Red Dead franchise, beginning with Red Dead Revolver in 2004, has grown into one of the most critically acclaimed video game franchises of the twenty-first century. Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Game West offers a critical, interdisciplinary look at this cultural phenomenon at the intersection of game studies and American history.

The magnificent collections contain a million pieces of art—objects that carry China’s deepest and most ancient memories. Among them are irreplaceable artefacts: exquisite paintings on silk, rare Ming porcelain, and the extraordinary Stone Drums of Qin, which are adorned with 2,500-year-old inscriptions of cultural significance.

Reflective and expansive, Mirror in the Sky situates Stevie Nicks as one of the finest songwriters of the twentieth century. This biography from distinguished music historian Simon Morrison examines Nicks as a singer and songwriter before and beyond her career with Fleetwood Mac, from the Arizona landscape of her childhood to the strobe-lit Night of 1000 Stevies celebrations.

In January 1939, Pablo Picasso was renowned in Europe but disdained by many in the United States. One year later, Americans across the country were clamoring to see his art. How did the controversial leader of the Paris avant-garde break through to the heart of American culture? The answer begins a generation earlier, when a renegade Irish American lawyer named John Quinn set out to build the greatest collection of Picassos in existence. His dream of a museum to house them died with him, until it was rediscovered by Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

Razzle Dazzle is a provocative, no-holds-barred narrative account of the people, money, and power that reinvented an iconic quarter of New York City, turning its gritty back alleys and sex shops into the glitzy, dazzling Great White Way - and bringing a crippled New York from the brink of bankruptcy to its glittering glory.