Entertainment History

In this mixture of cultural and social history that is both scholarly and vastly entertaining, Eyman dispels the myths and gives us the missing chapter in the history of Hollywood, the ribbon of dreams by which America conquered the world.

In America, in London, in Amsterdam, in Paris, revolutionary ideas fomenting since the late 1950s reached boiling point, culminating in a year in which the transient pop moment burst forth. Exploring the canonical figures, from The Beatles and Boty to Warhol and Reagan, 1966 delves deep into the social and cultural heart of the decade through masterfully compiled archival primary sources.

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...

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.

From the New York Times best-selling author Marc Eliot comes the definitive biography of one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful actors, producers, and directors in the history of American motion pictures. Marc Eliot examines the ever-exciting, often tumultuous arc of Eastwood's life and career, from his days as a disaffected college dropout, to his rise to fame as the archetypal loner, to his acceptance into the pantheon of the Academy as a multiple Oscar Award winner.

Grunge Is Dead weaves together the definitive story of the Seattle music scene through a series of interviews with the people who were there. Taking the form of an “oral” history, this books contains more than 130 interviews, along with essential background information from acclaimed music writer Greg Prato.

A legendary fusion of science fiction and horror, Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) is one of the most enduring films of modern cinema – its famously visceral scenes acting like a traumatic wound we seem compelled to revisit. Exploring the ways in which Alien compels us to think about otherness, Luckhurst demonstrates how and why this interstellar slasher movie, this old dark house in space, came to coil itself around our darkest imaginings about the fragility of humanity.

Siberia’s story is traditionally one of exiles, penal colonies, and unmarked graves. Yet also dotted throughout this remote land are pianos - grand instruments created during the boom years of the 19th century, as well as humble, Soviet-made uprights that found their way into equally modest homes. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the westernizing influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood. How these pianos traveled into this snow-bound wilderness is a testament to governors, adventurers, and exiles.

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 a book that inspired the Amazon original series starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Malcolm McDowell, oboist Blair Tindall recounts her decades-long professional career as a classical musician, from the recitals and Broadway orchestra performances to the secret life of musicians who survive hand to mouth in the backbiting New York classical music scene, trading sexual favors for plum jobs and assignments in orchestras across the city.

Many bemoan the decay of culture. But we all have a responsibility to care for culture, to nurture it in ways that help people thrive. In Culture Care artist Makoto Fujimura issues a call to cultural stewardship, in which we become generative and feed our culture's soul with beauty, creativity, and generosity. We serve others as cultural custodians of the future. This is a book for artists, but artists come in many forms.

Is the Dude a bowling-loving stoner or a philosophical genius living the good life? Naturally, it's the latter, and The Big Lebowski and Philosophy explains why. Enlisting the help of great thinkers like Plato and Nietzsche, the book explores the movie's hidden philosophical layers, cultural reflection, and political commentary.

From the former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York comes a timely and passionate case for the role of the well-designed object in the digital age. In this delightful exploration of craft in its many forms, curator and scholar Glenn Adamson explores how raw materials, tools, design and technique come together to produce objects of beauty and utility.

In this fascinating and in-depth biography, popular British writer and cultural historian John Higgs digs into the story behind the end of one of the most popular bands of the late twentieth century. The band members themselves, when asked in interviews, were never able to satisfactorily explain their behavior, but looked haunted every time it came up. With his characteristically creative mind, Higgs leads listeners on a journey to understand “a story that no one knows they are in—least of all the main characters.”

From the authors who brought you TAKING SHAPE comes REIGN OF CHUCKY, an exhaustive new look at the cinematic history of everyone’s favorite Good Guy. Covering all seven films in the franchise, this is the book that Chucky fans have been waiting for. Go behind the scenes of the first film to learn how Don Mancini’s original Blood Buddy script evolved into Child’s Play as we know it, then listen about how the franchise was continually reinvented across a slew of clever sequels

Considered by many to be a founder of Afrofuturism, Sun Ra - a.k.a. Herman Blount - was a composer, keyboardist, bandleader, philosopher, entrepreneur, poet, and self-proclaimed extraterrestrial from Saturn. He recorded over 200 albums with his Arkestra, which, dressed in Egypto-space costumes, played everything from boogie-woogie and swing to fusion and free jazz.

When it was finally released, Heaven's Gate failed so completely with reviewers and at the box office that it put legendary studio United Artists out of business and marked the end of Hollywood's auteur era. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Charles Elton delves deeply into the making and aftermath of the movie and presents a surprisingly different view to that of Steven Bach, one of the executives responsible for Heaven's Gate, who wrote a scathing book about the film and solidified the widely held view that Cimino wounded the movie industry beyond repair.

In Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva Noë raises a number of profound questions: What is art? Why do we value art as we do? What does art reveal about our nature? Drawing on philosophy, art history, and cognitive science, and making provocative use of examples from all three of these fields, Noë offers new answers to such questions. He also shows why recent efforts to frame questions about art in terms of neuroscience and evolutionary biology alone have been and will continue to be unsuccessful.

Like the Queen Street strip that has been its home for seven decades, the Horseshoe Tavern continues to evolve. It remains as relevant today as it did when Jack Starr founded the country music club on the site of a former blacksmith shop. From country and rockabilly to rock ‘n’ roll, punk, alt/country, and back to roots music, the venerable live music venue has evolved with the times and trends - always keeping pace with the music.

The fascinating and little-known story of the Louvre, from its inception as a humble fortress to its transformation into the palatial residence of the kings of France and then into the world's greatest art museum.