Entertainment History

Liszt once said that Mozart composed more bars than a trained copyist could write in a lifetime. Mozart's gift and skill with instruments was also remarkable as he mastered all of them except the harp. For example, no sooner had the clarinet been invented and introduced than Mozart began playing and composing for it. In addition to his many insights into Mozart's music, Johnson also challenges the many myths that have followed Mozart, including those about the composer's health, wealth, religion, and relationships.

Much has been written about the storied New Hollywood of the 1970s, but while Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola were making their first classic movies, a parallel universe of directors gave birth to the modern horror film - aggressive, raw, and utterly original. Based on unprecedented access to the genre's major players, New York Times critic Jason Zinoman's Shock Value delivers the first definitive account of horror's golden age.

The Gutmanns, as they were known, rose from a small Bohemian hamlet to become one of Germany's most powerful banking families. They also amassed a magnificent, world-class art collection that included works by Degas, Renoir, Botticelli, Guardi, and many, many others. But the Nazi regime snatched from them everything they had worked to build: their remarkable art, their immense wealth, their prominent social standing, and their very lives.

No period in the history of rock music offered such an abrupt shift in prevailing tastes as the 1990s. While just a short while before, radio and MTV were clamoring for hair metal bands, suddenly alt-rockers such as Jane’s Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, Faith No More, Primus, Smashing Pumpkins, and of course, Nirvana, brought a sea change not just in what the most popular bands sounded like, but also in fashion, politics, and seemingly all aspects of pop culture.

“What are the greatest rock albums of all-time?” Perhaps one of the more common questions examined between music-loving chums that has led to many a good-natured debate. But if you really dig deeper into the question...is it from the standpoint of the album’s importance in rock history? A classic release that proved significant to an artist’s career? Or perhaps merely a personal favorite, that you just can’t get enough of?

Award-winning civil rights historian Ray Arsenault describes the dramatic story behind Marian Anderson’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial - an early milestone in civil rights history - on the 70th anniversary of her performance. On Easter Sunday 1939, the brilliant vocalist Marian Anderson sang before a throng of 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington - an electrifying moment and an underappreciated milestone in civil rights history.

The national bestseller and direct tie-in to the new game expansion pack Warlords of Draenor—a thrilling novel set in the universe of the record-breaking, internationally bestselling video game World of Warcraft! The brutal siege of Orgrimmar is over. Alliance and Horde forces have stripped...

It was the splendor and the scandal of the age. In 1506, the ferociously ambitious Renaissance Pope Julius II tore down the most sacred shrine in Europe, the millennium-old St. Peter's Basilica built by the Emperor Constantine over the apostle's grave, to build a better basilica.

More than 50 years ago, John Coltrane drew the 12 musical notes in a circle and connected them with straight lines, forming a five-pointed star. Inspired by Einstein, Coltrane had put physics and geometry at the core of his music. Physicist and jazz musician Stephon Alexander returns the favor, using jazz to answer physics' most vexing questions about the past and future of the universe.

This was Alan Clark’s first volume of diaries and the only one that he recorded. As such it is a unique and historical record and reminder of the man and his work. To hear Alan Clark reading the book in his marvelously rich voice adds immeasurably to the pleasure of these informative and entertaining diaries. The recording covers two Parliaments and constitutes the most outspoken and revealing account of British politics ever written.

Secrets of the Serpent: After years of research, the real religious history of the world can be told. In Secrets of the Serpent, Philip Gardiner for the first time reveals that the world’s most mysterious places were once sacred to the Serpent Cult. The Cross of Thoth: Deep within the great pyramid is a secret that has remained hidden for over 4000 years. An ancient instrument designed to unlock mysteries that have baffled mankind for generations. The Real BloodlineTim Wallace-Murphy talks about the real bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene....

George Miller made his first film, Mad Max, in 1976 after hiring unknown Mel Gibson and editing it in his kitchen. It would become the most profitable film ever made. Miller and Max is the story of two heroes. One, a globally recognised dystopian warrior. The second, the artist who created him. Written with the cooperation of a role call of cast, crew, family and associates, author Luke Buckmaster gets behind the scenes of both the set and the man: revealing the Max in Miller.

One of the world's most iconic movie stars, Kirk Douglas has distinguished himself as a producer, philanthropist, and author of ten works of fiction and memoir. Now, more than fifty years after the release of his enduring epic Spartacus, Douglas reveals the riveting drama behind the making of the legendary gladiator film. Douglas began producing the movie in the midst of the politically charged era when Hollywood’s moguls refused to hire anyone accused of Communist sympathies.

Ignoring nearly all rock traditions, experimenting in near-total secrecy in their Düsseldorf studio, Kraftwerk fused sound and technology, graphic design and performance, modernist Bauhaus aesthetics and Rhineland industrialisation - even human and machine - to change the course of modern music. This is the story of Kraftwerk as a cultural phenomenon, who turned electronic music into avant-garde concept art and created the soundtrack to our digital age.

When Dave Hickey was 12, he rode the surfer's dream: the perfect wave. And, like so many things in life we long for, it didn't quite turn out - he shot the pier and dashed himself against the rocks of Sunset Cliffs in Ocean Beach, which just about killed him. Fortunately, for Hickey and for us, he survived, and continues to battle, decades into a career as one of America's foremost critical iconoclasts, a trusted, even cherished no-nonsense voice commenting on the all-too-often nonsensical worlds of art and culture.

John Glatt tells the story of the Fillmores through the lives of Bill Graham, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Carlos Santana, and an all-star supporting cast. Chronicling the East and West Coast cultures of the late 1960s and early 1970s-New York City with its speed, heroin, and the Velvet Underground versus San Francisco with the LSD-drenched Summer of Love - Glatt reveals how Graham made it all possible. But why did Graham shutter both Fillmores within weeks of each other in 1971, during the height of their popularity?

Formed in Hermosa Beach, California, in 1978, for eight brutal years Black Flag made and played brilliant, ugly, no-holds-barred music on a self-appointed touring circuit of America’s clubs, squats, and community halls. They fought with everybody: the police, the record industry, and even their own fans. They toured overseas on pennies a day and did it in beat-up trucks and vans. Spray Paint the Walls tells Black Flag’s story from the inside, drawing on exclusive interviews with the group’s members, their contemporaries, and the bands they inspired.

Frank Sinatra’s very name seems synonymous with legend. Sinatra grew up in hardscrabble Hoboken, New Jersey, and rose to prominence as one of music’s first superstars. While becoming one of the best-selling artists of all time, he remade popular music in his own image. From his crooning days on a street corner in Hoboken to his waltzing across the world stage, the swagger of Frank Sinatra was unmistakable.

Mark Kermode’s compelling study of this horror classic was originally published in 1997, and then extensively updated and expanded in 2003 to incorporate the discovery of new material. This revised edition documents the deletion and reinstatement of key scenes that have now been integrated into the film to create The Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen. Candid interviews with director William Friedkin and writer/producer William Peter Blatty reveal the behind the-scenes battles which took place during the production.

Trip-hop described some of the 1990s’ best music, and it was one of the decade’s most revealing bad ideas. This book chronicles the music and its leading artists, packed with recommended listening, essential tracks, great remixes, and under-recognized albums. But the music at its best still sounds experimental and dramatic; and its influence lingers through artists like FKA twigs, Sevdaliza, James Blake, Billie Eilish, and Lana Del Rey. This short book is a guide to ’trip-hop’ in its context of the weird 1990s.