The "Golden Age" of television was in part so named because it was the era in which new technology was pioneered and industry rules were still being written. Here was a fascinating new medium, founded by executives with no previous body of experience, and a myriad of directions in which to proceed. Numerous factions spent the next generation wresting control over content and the content/product relationship.

The Twilight Zone Companion is the complete show-by-show guide to one of television's greatest series. Zicree's well-written account is fascinating listening for even the casual fan. Coverage of each episode includes a plot synopsis, Rod Serling's opening narration, behind-the-scenes stories from the original artists who created the series, and a complete list of cast and credits.

"Rest your eyes, and listen here....I'm Rod Serling, and this is The Zero Hour." From 1972 to 1974, The Zero Hour brought potent thrillers to the radio waves, edge-of-your-seat original radio dramas from best-selling mystery novels, featuring stars from radio's Golden Age and popular television personalities. Rest your eyes and experience a provocative episode from this legendary radio program.

Ever since a childhood visit to Washington, DC, Cassidy Hutchinson aspired to serve her country in government. Raised in a working-class family with a military background, she was the first in her immediate family to graduate from college. Despite having no ties to Washington, Hutchinson landed a vital position at the center of the Trump White House.

Henry Winkler, launched into prominence as “The Fonz” in the beloved Happy Days, has transcended the role that made him who he is. Brilliant, funny, and widely regarded as the nicest man in Hollywood (though he would be the first to tell you that it’s simply not the case, he’s really just grateful to be here), Henry shares in this achingly vulnerable memoir the disheartening truth of his childhood, the difficulties of a life with severe dyslexia, the pressures of a role that takes on a life of its own, and the path forward once your wildest dream seems behind you.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

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.

She lived at full throttle on stage, screen, and in real life, with highs that made history and lows that finally brought down the curtain at age 47. Judy Garland died over 30 years ago, but no biography has so completely captured her spirit - and demons - until now. From her tumultuous early years as a child performer to her tragic last days, Gerald Clarke reveals the authentic Judy in a biography rich in new detail and unprecedented revelations.

The woman behind the icon known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the undisputed Queen of Halloween, reveals her full story, filled with intimate bombshells - and told by the bombshell herself.

Musician, actor, activist, and the iconic face of New York City cool, Debbie Harry is the front woman of Blondie, a band that forged a new sound that brought together the worlds of rock, punk, disco, reggae, and hip-hop to create some of the most beloved pop songs of all time. As a muse, she collaborated with some of the boldest artists of the past four decades. The scope of Debbie Harry’s impact on our culture has been matched only by her reticence to reveal her rich inner life - until now.

In this award-winning Audible Studios production, Trevor Noah tells his wild coming-of-age tale during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa. It’s a story that begins with his mother throwing him from a moving van to save him from a potentially fatal dispute with gangsters, then follows the budding comedian’s path to self-discovery through episodes both poignant and comical.

In this groundbreaking new work, David Kessler - an expert on grief and the coauthor with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross of the iconic On Grief and Grieving - journeys beyond the classic five stages to discover a sixth stage: meaning.

Historians have long told the story of America’s birth as the triumph of Jefferson’s democratic ideals over the aristocratic intentions of Hamilton. Chernow presents an entirely different man, whose legendary ambitions were motivated not merely by self-interest but by passionate patriotism and a stubborn will to build the foundations of American prosperity and power.

"Rest your eyes, and listen here....I'm Rod Serling, and this is The Zero Hour." From 1972 to 1974, The Zero Hour brought potent thrillers to the radio waves, edge-of-your-seat original radio dramas from best-selling mystery novels, featuring stars from radio's Golden Age and popular television personalities. Rest your eyes and experience a provocative episode from this legendary radio program.

This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

A memoir by the influential Grammy Award-winning singer and actor - son of journalist Loudon Wainwright, former husband of Kate McGarrigle and Suzzy Roche, and father of Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, Lucy Wainwright Roche, and Lexie Kelly Wainwright - a captivating meditation on relationships and creativity from the patriarch of one of America's great musical families. With a career spanning more than four decades, Loudon Wainwright III has established himself as one of the most enduring singer-songwriters who emerged from the late '60s.

Alexandra Styron's parents—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written with humor, compassion, and grace.

It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow—and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on.

Tracy K. Smith has a fairly typical upbringing in suburban California: the youngest in a family of five children raised with limitless affection and a firm belief in God by a stay-at-home mother and an engineer father. But after spending a summer in Alabama at her grandmother's home, she returns to California with a new sense of what it means for her to be Black: from her mother's memories of picking cotton as a girl in her father's field for pennies a bushel to her parents' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.

Michael Hainey had just turned six when his uncle knocked on his family's back door one morning with the tragic news: Bob Hainey, Michael's father, was found alone near his car on Chicago's North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack. Thirty-five years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive, hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone.

Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, whom she met while the two were working in New York City, when Didion was at Vogue and Dunne was writing for Time. They became wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles and cowrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and nonfiction.

A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and 80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation - few of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Francisco's vibrant cultural scene.

Of all of John Irving's books, this is the one that lends itself best to audio. In print, Owen Meany's dialogue is set in capital letters; for this production, Irving himself selected Joe Barrett to deliver Meany's difficult voice as intended. In the summer of 1953, two 11-year-old boys – best friends – are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary and terrifying.

From two-time Academy Award winner and screen icon Geena Davis, the surprising tale of her “journey to badassery”—from her epically polite childhood to roles that loaned her the strength to become a powerhouse in Hollywood.

Our preteen years, ages nine to 13, can present some of the most difficult times in our young lives, a period of tremendous physical and emotional change. We're eager to leave the "kid" stage, yet we're uncertain about what adolescence will bring; we start hearing the familiar refrain "wait until you're older" far too often. Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul is a companion guide for these transitional years.

Two sisters, small-town Ontario, 1934. Canadian author Richard Wright tells their story, from the ordinary to the extraoridinary with an eye for the commonplace and poignant sense of the larger undercurrents that change people's lives.

The oldest daughter of revered composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein offers a rare look at her father on the centennial of his birth in a deeply intimate and broadly evocative memoir. The composer of On the Town and West Side Story, chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, television star, humanitarian, friend of the powerful and influential, and the life of every party, Leonard Bernstein was an enormous celebrity during one of the headiest periods of American cultural life, as well as the most protean musician in 20th-century America.

When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...

The epitome of grace, independence, and wit, Lauren Bacall continues to astound generations with her audacious spirit and on-screen excellence. Together with Humphrey Bogart, she produced some of the most electric scenes in movie history, and their romance on and off screen made them Hollywood's most celebrated couple.

"To begin with I was in love and I am in love so that's not hard," Barbara Bush told her granddaughter Ellie LeBlond Sosa. Sosa had asked for the secret to her and President George H.W. Bush's 77-year love affair that withstood World War II separation, a leap of faith into the oil fields of West Texas, the painful loss of a child, a political climb to the highest office, and after the White House, the transition back to a "normal" life. Sosa and co-author Kelly Anne Chase paint the portrait of the enduring relationship of George and Barbara Bush.

The "Golden Age" of television was in part so named because it was the era in which new technology was pioneered and industry rules were still being written. Here was a fascinating new medium, founded by executives with no previous body of experience, and a myriad of directions in which to proceed. Numerous factions spent the next generation wresting control over content and the content/product relationship.

In August 1862, after decades of broken treaties, increasing hardship, and relentless encroachment on their lands, a group of Dakota warriors convened a council at the tepee of their leader, Little Crow. Knowing the strength and resilience of the young American nation, Little Crow counseled caution, but anger won the day. Forced to either lead his warriors in a war he knew they could not win or leave them to their fates, he declared, "[Little Crow] is not a coward: he will die with you."

In January of 1973 Richard Nixon announced the end of the Vietnam War and prepared for a triumphant second term - until televised Watergate hearings revealed his White House as little better than a mafia den. The next president declared upon Nixon’s resignation “our long national nightmare is over” - but then congressional investigators exposed the CIA for assassinating foreign leaders. The collapse of the South Vietnamese government rendered moot the sacrifice of some 58,000 American lives.

From the ancient civilizations along the banks of the Indus to the vibrant, modern democracy that thrives today, India’s history is a rich saga told through diverse cultures, monumental achievements, and profound spiritual insights. Explore the dawn of Indian civilization, witness the rise and fall of mighty empires, from the Maurya and Gupta dynasties to the majestic Mughal Empire, each leaving an indelible mark on the subcontinent’s cultural and architectural heritage.

It is 1984 in Chile, in the middle of the Pinochet dictatorship. A member of the secret police walks into the office of a dissident magazine and finds a reporter, who records his testimony. The narrator of Nona Fernández's mesmerizing and terrifying novel The Twilight Zone is a child when she first sees this man's face on the magazine's cover with the words "I Tortured People". His complicity in the worst crimes of the regime and his commitment to speaking about them haunt the narrator into her adulthood and career as a writer and documentarian.