Over the fifty years that Lorne Michaels has been at the helm of Saturday Night Live, he has become a revered and inimitable presence in the entertainment world. He’s a tastemaker, a mogul, a withholding father figure, a genius spotter of talent, a shrewd businessman, a name-dropper, a raconteur, the inspiration for Dr. Evil, the winner of more than a hundred Emmys—and, essentially, a mystery. Generations of writers and performers have spent their lives trying to figure him out, by turns demonizing and lionizing him.

Whether it's Tom and Jerry, Scooby-Doo, the Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Top Cat, Huckleberry Hound, or hundreds of others, the creations of the Hanna-Barbera studio continue to delight generations worldwide. The groundbreaking company employed thousands in the art and business of animation. Some of them were vintage-era veterans, others were up-and-coming talents, some of whom found blockbuster success at other studios. The power of the sounds that Hanna-Barbera crafted to accompany the compelling visuals was a key factor in its spectacular success.

Saul Goodman v. Jimmy McGill: The Better Call Saul Critical Companion collects chief TV critic at Rolling Stone Alan Sepinwall's critical essays on every episode of the Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated series. Sepinwall covered Better Call Saul from start to finish, and conducted exhaustive interviews with creator Vince Gilligan and stars Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seahorn, reproduced here alongside new interviews with series cocreator Peter Gould.

Bruce Vilanch is known as a go-to comedy writer for award shows, sitcoms, and top-heavy variety specials, but he has also been responsible for quite a few of the worst shows ever put on television—legendarily bad productions. It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time is a lifetime reflection of what Vilanch has experienced, learned, forgotten, dismissed, and embraced in decades of working in show business

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Fire and Fury delivers a breathtaking insider account of the 2024 Trump campaign—undoubtedly the wildest, most unpredictable campaign in U.S. history, including multiple criminal trials, two assassination attempts, and a sudden switch of opponents.

Even by the standards of the 1970s, even compared to Jar-Jar Binks, the legendary 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special is a peerlessly cringeworthy pop-culture artifact.

When Graydon Carter was offered the editorship of Vanity Fair in 1992, he knew he faced an uphill battle—how to make the esteemed and long-established magazine his own. Not only was he confronted with a staff that he perceived to be loyal to the previous regime, but he arrived only a few years after launching Spy magazine, which gloried in skewering the celebrated and powerful—the very people Vanity Fair venerated.

Los Angeles native and longtime sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times, Scott Howard-Cooper draws on more than a hundred interviews and extensive access to many of the principal figures, including Wooden’s family, to deliver a rich narrative that reveals the turmoil at the heart of this storied college basketball program.

Farewell Yellow Brick Road is a celebration of Elton John's record-breaking, globe-spanning farewell tour—from Allentown to Auckland, from Sydney to San Francisco. Featured concerts include Elton’s dazzling performances at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium in November 2022, the finale of which streamed live on Disney+. Fans will be treated to a behind-the-scenes glimpse into every aspect of these spectacular shows, including Elton’s legendary touring wardrobe by Gucci, the set design, official photography, and more.

In Continental Reckoning renowned historian Elliott West presents a sweeping narrative of the American West and its vital role in the transformation of the nation. In the 1840s, by which time the United States had expanded to the Pacific, what would become the West was home to numerous vibrant Native cultures and vague claims by other nations.

After his bestselling home run books Why We Love Baseball and The Baseball 100, Joe Posnanski turns from the national pastime to the number one sport in America. Why We Love Football is Posnanski’s newest must-have deep dive into the archives and legends of the sport, and the result is a rousing tale of the 100 greatest moments in football lore. This is the best kind of sports writing. Entertaining, enlightening, heartbreaking, hilarious, and always fascinating, these stories of the sport offer a panoramic look across its history.

Legendary sitcom director James Burrows has spent five decades making America laugh. Here listeners will find never-revealed stories behind the casting of the dozens of great sitcoms he directed, as well as details as to how these memorable shows were created, how they got on the air, and how the cast and crew continued to develop and grow. Burrows also examines his own challenges, career victories, and defeats, and provides advice for aspiring directors, writers, and actors.

The power of the presidential pardon has our national attention now more than ever before. In The Pardon, New York Times bestselling author and CNN legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin provides a timely and compelling narrative of the most controversial presidential pardon in American history—Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, revealing the profound implications for our current political landscape, and how it is already affecting the legacies of both Presidents Biden and Trump.

We are living in the Wild West of college sports. Name, Image and Likeness endorsements, the transfer portal, collectives, conference realignment, the powerful influence of media companies have all rendered the notion of amateur athletics a quaint relic of the past, replaced by a Brave New World where money and self-interest rule. The Price is a sweeping, in-depth, thought-provoking look at an inflection point in big-time college football.

In the summer of 1982, eight science fiction films were released within six weeks of one another. E.T., Tron, Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, The Thing, and Mad Max: The Road Warrior changed the careers of some of Hollywood's now biggest names―altering the art of movie-making to this day.

Join Kenya Barris and Malcolm Gladwell as they bypass pleasantries and promotional banter to deliver raw, unfiltered conversations with some of today’s most influential figures. Featuring titans across a spectrum of professions (from Olympic gold medalists to trailblazing Fortune 500 CEOs and everything in between), The Unusual Suspects with Kenya Barris and Malcolm Gladwell pulls back the curtain to offer listeners unprecedented access to the minds of the world’s most extraordinary individuals and their distinct paths to success.

Samantha Bee wants to talk about menopause. Okay, she actually doesn’t want to, but she must. Half of the world’s population will spend one third of their lives in it, yet it’s been completely shrouded in secrecy—until now. The Emmy Award-winning host of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee shares everything she has learned in her new one-woman show, How to Survive Menopause. Because everyone needs that one best friend who will keep it real for them—like, really real.

Yasmin’s career is finally taking off. After years of fighting for visibility in the theater, the British-Pakistani actress lands the eponymous role of Mrs. Bibi—the ultimate aunty-ji—in a hit primetime sitcom. Her newfound success means a steady paycheck, the possibility of owning her own home, and a carefree fling with a charming young assistant director. But when her estranged sister arrives with news of their mother, Yasmin's hard-won stability is shaken to its core.

The year 1972 saw the beginning of a five-year span in which Stevie Wonder released five groundbreaking, critically acclaimed albums, garnering him more than half a dozen Grammys and more than 10 million albums sold, securing his place as one of the most important American musicians and songwriters in history. For the first time, uncover the untold story of an extraordinary artistic journey that shaped the greatest creative era in popular music history.

You can’t truly understand the last decade of the 20th century without a look at the muddy, electrifying rock music that would come to define it: grunge. For such a short-lived genre—at least in the mainstream—grunge had a lasting impact on American music and culture. It also provides a unique lens through which to examine the post-Reagan, pre-internet America of the 1990s. In the six lectures of The Story of Grunge, you’ll explore the rise and evolution of the genre, tracing it from Seattle subculture to MTV and the Billboard charts, all the way to its decline and evolution into new forms.

The very strange but nevertheless true story of the dark underbelly of a 1960s hippie utopia. Laurel Canyon in the 1960s and early 1970s was a magical place where a dizzying array of musical artists congregated to create much of the music that provided the soundtrack to those turbulent times. But there was a dark side to that scene as well. Many didn't make it out alive, and many of those deaths remain shrouded in mystery to this day.

All he wants to do is let the perfect man in, but can he overcome his unhinged neighbor, a seductive cult, a self-obsessed vampire, and a cat intent on dragging him to hell?

No one other than Warren Zanes, rocker and writer and friend, could author a book about Tom Petty that is as honest and evocative of Petty's music and the remarkable rock and roll history he and his band helped to write. Born in Gainesville, Florida, with more than a little hillbilly in his blood, Tom Petty was a Southern shit kicker, a kid without a whole lot of promise. Rock and roll made it otherwise.

With Emmy, Grammy, and six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald as Blanche DuBois alongside Carla Gugino as Stella, O’Hara takes a fresh and visceral look at the emotionally charged relationship between these two iconic sisters. Haunted by her past, Blanche seeks refuge with Stella and Stanley (Ariel Shafir) in New Orleans, where she wrestles with the nature of her sister’s husband, her sister’s denial, and her own unraveling mind.

Farewell Yellow Brick Road is a celebration of Elton John's record-breaking, globe-spanning farewell tour—from Allentown to Auckland, from Sydney to San Francisco. Featured concerts include Elton’s dazzling performances at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium in November 2022, the finale of which streamed live on Disney+. Fans will be treated to a behind-the-scenes glimpse into every aspect of these spectacular shows, including Elton’s legendary touring wardrobe by Gucci, the set design, official photography, and more.

Over the fifty years that Lorne Michaels has been at the helm of Saturday Night Live, he has become a revered and inimitable presence in the entertainment world. He’s a tastemaker, a mogul, a withholding father figure, a genius spotter of talent, a shrewd businessman, a name-dropper, a raconteur, the inspiration for Dr. Evil, the winner of more than a hundred Emmys—and, essentially, a mystery. Generations of writers and performers have spent their lives trying to figure him out, by turns demonizing and lionizing him.

When first published to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, Live from New York was immediately proclaimed the best book ever produced on the landmark and legendary late-night show. In their own words, unfiltered and uncensored, a dazzling galaxy of trail-blazing talents recalled three turbulent decades of on-camera antics and off-camera escapades.

Think of an important moment in live TV over the last half-century. Dick Ebersol was likely involved. Dropping out of college to join the crew of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, Ebersol worked the Mexico City Olympics during the famous protest by John Carlos and Tommie Smith as well as the Munich Olympics during the tragic hostage standoff. He went on to cocreate Saturday Night Live with Lorne Michaels and later produced the show for four seasons, helping launch Eddie Murphy to stardom.

Whether it's Tom and Jerry, Scooby-Doo, the Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Top Cat, Huckleberry Hound, or hundreds of others, the creations of the Hanna-Barbera studio continue to delight generations worldwide. The groundbreaking company employed thousands in the art and business of animation. Some of them were vintage-era veterans, others were up-and-coming talents, some of whom found blockbuster success at other studios. The power of the sounds that Hanna-Barbera crafted to accompany the compelling visuals was a key factor in its spectacular success.

A history of Saturday Night Live that finally reveals what really went on backstage, on the set, in the writers' offices, and on the town. Dozens of stars, writers, and guest hosts recall the backstage gossip, feuds, foibles, drugs, sex, struggles, and calamities of the show that changed television.

In Oscar Wars, Michael Schulman chronicles the remarkable, sprawling history of the Academy Awards and the personal dramas—some iconic, others never-before-revealed—that have played out on the stage and off camera. Unlike other books on the subject, each chapter takes a deep dive into a particular year, conflict, or even category that tells a larger story of cultural change, from Louis B. Mayer to Moonlight. Schulman examines how the red carpet runs through contested turf, and the victors aren't always as clear as the names drawn from envelopes.

i>39 Years of Short-Term Memory Loss is a seriously funny, offbeat, and irreverent memoir that chronicles the early days of Saturday Night Live and features some of its greatest personalities---Al Franken, Lorne Michaels, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Michael O'Donoghue, and Chris Farley.

The behind-the-scenes story of the iconic funnymen who ruled '80s Hollywood - Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Eddie Murphy - and the beloved films that made them stars, including Animal House, Caddyshack, and Ghostbusters.

This ultimate biography of National Lampoon and its cofounder Doug Kenney offers the first complete history of the immensely popular magazine and its brilliant and eccentric characters. Relying on wonderful stories about the comedy scene in New York City in the 1970s and National Lampoon's place at the center of it, author Josh Karp chronicles how the magazine spawned a popular radio show and two long-running theatrical productions that helped launch the careers of John Belushi, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, and Gilda Radner.

The New York Times best-selling biography of an American comedy legend. After three years of sobriety, Chris Farley's life was at its creative peak until a string of professional disappointments chased him back to drugs and alcohol. He fought hard against them, but it was a fight he would lose in December 1997. Farley's fans immediately drew parallels between his death and that of his idol, John Belushi. Without looking deeper, however, many failed to see that Farley was much more than just another Hollywood drug overdose. In this officially authorized oral history, Farley's friends and family remember his work and life.

Saul Goodman v. Jimmy McGill: The Better Call Saul Critical Companion collects chief TV critic at Rolling Stone Alan Sepinwall's critical essays on every episode of the Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated series. Sepinwall covered Better Call Saul from start to finish, and conducted exhaustive interviews with creator Vince Gilligan and stars Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seahorn, reproduced here alongside new interviews with series cocreator Peter Gould.

From growing up in Los Angeles with movie star neighbors, bearing witness to the music scene in the 1960s and seeing the rise of comedy in the early 70s, to studying mime in Paris under the tutelage of Marcel Marceau to becoming a founding member of the seminal comedy troupe The Groundlings, it's no wonder that Lorne Michaels offered Laraine Newman a spot in the original cast of Saturday Night Live. There, Laraine was part of the show that changed TV - and comedy - forever.

In this artful memoir, Grammy Award-winning music producer Charlie Peacock flexes his literary chops and gives listeners the gritty backstage stories they crave: biographical anecdotes, geeky trivia, and how the hits were written and recorded (from jazz to rock and pop). Threaded throughout is Peacock’s unique ancestral and spiritual story—the roots. Like Coltrane, Dylan, and Bono before him, Peacock reveals a Christ-affection while refusing genres too small for his music.

"Duty Accomplished," the compelling third installment in Michael Deeb's Drieborg Chronicles series, delves into the tumultuous years of the American Civil War. Union Major Michael Drieborg, having escaped the horrors of Confederate prison Andersonville, returns to duty in December 1864. Recuperating in Michigan, he's called back to Washington for reassignment, eager to contribute to Congressman Kellogg's Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. President Lincoln entrusts Michael with a crucial mission: aiding recently liberated Union war prisoners in Savannah, Georgia.

It was a pretty radical idea - a channel for teenagers, showing nothing but music videos. It was such a radical idea that almost no one thought it would actually succeed, much less become a force in the worlds of music, television, film, fashion, sports, and even politics. But it did work. MTV became more than anyone had ever imagined. I Want My MTV tells the story of the first decade of MTV, the golden era when MTV's programming was all videos, all the time, and kids watched religiously to see their favorite bands, learn about new music, and have something to talk about at parties.