Entertainment History

Film Studies is a concise and indispensable introduction to the formal study of cinema. Ed Sikov offers a step-by-step curriculum for the appreciation of all types of narrative cinema, detailing the essential elements of film form and systematically training the spectator to be an active listener and critic. He treats a number of fundamental factors in filmmaking, including editing, composition, lighting, the use of color and sound, and narrative.

The co-founder of The Cure and author of Cured delivers a fascinating deep dive into the dark romanticism of Goth music, a misunderstood genre and culture. GOTH is an entertaining and engaging historical memoir, and a journey through Goth music and culture, exploring creative giants like...

Authors Keegan-Michael Key and Elle Key build on the popularity of their 2022 Webby Award-winning podcast and delve deeper into the world of sketch, helped along with new essays created expressly for the book by comedy greats.

The rollicking saga of reality television, a “sweeping” (The Washington Post) cultural history of America’s most influential, most divisive artistic phenomenon, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning New Yorker writer—“a must-read for anyone interested in television or popular culture”...

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.

In this conclusion to his trilogy of authoritative books on Canada's most beloved and successful rock band, Martin Popoff takes us through three decades of "life at the top" for Rush's Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart. Though this era begins with the brisk-selling Roll the Bones and sees throngs of fans sell out international tours, there is also unimaginable tragedy.

Award-winning author Stephen Greenblatt is one of the most influential literary thinkers in the world. An acclaimed interpreter of Shakespeare's works, his ideas have changed the way countless people approach the classics. Now Greenblatt's uniquely brilliant voice delivers a magnificent biography of the Bard himself.

Believe it or not, America's fascination with celebrity culture was thriving well before the days of TMZ, Perez Hilton, Charlie Sheen's breakdown, and allegations against Woody Allen. And the stars of yesteryear? They weren't always the saints that we make them out to be. Part biography, part cultural history, the stories contained in this book cover the stuff that films are made of: love, sex, drugs, illegitimate children, illicit affairs, and botched cover-ups.

Saturday Night is the intimate, original history of Saturday Night Live, from its beginnings as an outlaw program produced by an unruly band of renegades from the comedy underground to a TV institution that made stars of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy. This is the book that revealed to the world what really happened behind the scenes during the first ten years of this groundbreaking program, from the battles SNL fought with NBC to the battles fought within the show itself.

Plongeon fulgurant aux sources de notre imaginaire, ce premier tome d’Histoire de l’art d’Élie Faure retrace la naissance du regard humain, des grottes paléolithiques aux colosses d’Égypte, des taureaux ailés d’Assyrie aux temples grecs irradiés de lumière, jusqu’à Rome et son génie des pierres et des routes. En conteur-poète et historien visionnaire, Faure révèle comment les œuvres ne sont jamais décor, mais systèmes vivants de forces, où la forme épouse la fonction et l’idée devient chair — l’art comme langue commune, respiration des peuples et mémoire du monde.

The Disneyland Story: The Unofficial Guide to the Evolution of Walt Disney's Dream is the story of how Walt Disney's greatest creation was conceived, nurtured, and how it grew into a source of joy and inspiration for generations of visitors. Despite his successors' battles with the whims of history and their own doubts and egos, Walt's vision maintained momentum, thrived, and taught future generations how to do it Walt Disney's way.

Michelangelo, God's Architect is the first book to tell the full story of Michelangelo's final two decades, when the peerless artist refashioned himself into the master architect of St. Peter’s Basilica and other major buildings. When the Pope handed Michelangelo control of the St. Peter’s project in 1546, it was a study in architectural mismanagement, plagued by flawed design and faulty engineering.

Hot Cold Heavy Light collects 100 writings - some long, some short - that taken together form a group portrait of many of the world’s most significant and interesting artists. From Pablo Picasso to Cindy Sherman, Old Masters to contemporary masters, paintings to comix, and saints to charlatans, Schjeldahl ranges widely through the diverse and confusing art world, an expert guide to a dazzling scene.

Hello, I'm Pamela Nightingale, daughter of the late international best-selling author and radio personality, Earl Nightingale. I'd like to share with you the true-life story of my father and the personal secrets of his life, with behind-the-scenes details of how he discovered the Strangest Secret. In this time of uncertainty and difficulty for many, the time is right to release the inspirational example of how Earl Nightingale lived his life and overcame adversity and limitations to help others do the same. Join me and my cousins on the adventure of a lifetime.

Cinema is full of neurotic personalities, but few things are more transfixing than a woman losing her mind onscreen. Horror as a genre provides the most welcoming platform for these histrionics: crippling paranoia, desperate loneliness, masochistic death-wishes, dangerous obsessiveness, apocalyptic hysteria. Unlike her male counterpart—the eccentric'—the female neurotic lives a shamed existence, making these films those rare places where her destructive emotions get to play.

Few songs have captured the contradictions and ambiguities of the 1960s as memorably as "California Dreamin'," the iconic folk music single that catapulted the Mamas & the Papas into rock and roll history. In All the Leaves Are Brown, author Scott Shea details how John Phillips, Denny Doherty, Michelle Phillips, and "Mama Cass" Elliot became standard-bearers for California counterculture, following their transformation from folk music wannabes to rock sensations and chronicling the tumultuous events that followed their unexpected success.

A companion to the #1 music podcast on Spotify, this book takes readers through the greatest hits that define a weirdly undefinable decade. The 1990s were a chaotic and gritty and utterly magical time for music, a confounding barrage of genres and lifestyles and superstars, from grunge to...

Caddyshack is one of the most beloved comedies of all time, a classic snobs vs. slobs story of working-class kids and the white-collar buffoons that make them haul their golf bags in the hot summer sun. It has sex, drugs, and one very memorable candy bar, but the movie we all know and love didn't start out that way, and everyone who made it certainly didn't have the word classic in mind as the cameras were rolling.

The central argument of Chromophobia is that a chromophobic impulse—a fear of corruption or contamination through color—lurks within much Western cultural and intellectual thought. This is apparent in the many and varied attempts to purge color, either by making it the property of some foreign body—the oriental, the feminine, the infantile, the vulgar, or the pathological—or by relegating it to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential, or the cosmetic.

In his tell-all, legendary Doors guitarist, Robby Krieger, one of Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time," opens up about his band's meteoric career, his own darkest moments, and the most famous black eye in rock 'n' roll. ​Few bands are as shrouded in the murky haze of rock...