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The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies
Paul Fischer · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures
Edward Ball · 447 pages
From the National Book Award-winning author of Slaves in the Family, this book is the riveting true story of the partnership between the murderer who invented the movies and the robber baron who built the railroads. Edward Ball's ability to mine history and draw out its secrets has earned him a significant critical reputation as a best-selling nonfiction writer. In The Inventor and the Tycoon, he
An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood
Neal Gabler · 502 pages
"From noted film critic Neal Gabler comes a provocative, original, and richly entertaining group biography of the Jewish immigrants who founded and came to dominate the American film industry. These men--Adolph_Zukor, Carl Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer, the Warner brothers, Harry Cohn--created an image of America out of their own idealism, a vision that proved so powerful that it ultimately came to shap
Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous With American History
Yunte Huang · 354 pages
A biography of cinematic hero Charlie Chan, based on the real-life Chinese immigrant detective, Chang Apana, whose bravado inspired mystery writer Earl Derr Biggers to depict his fictional sleuth as a wisecracking and wise investigator rather than a stereotype.
The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick
Mallory O'Meara · 368 pages
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
Erik Larson · 464 pages
From back cover: Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson's spell-binding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men - the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World's Fair, striving to secure America's place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik
Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam
Pope Brock · 330 pages
In 1917, after years of selling worthless patent remedies throughout the Southeast, John R. Brinkley--America's most brazen young con man--arrived in the tiny town of Milford, Kansas. He set up a medical practice and introduced an outlandish surgical method using goat glands to restore the fading virility of local farmers.It was all nonsense, of course, but thousands of paying customers quickly tu
A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power
Paul Fischer · 353 pages
"A nonfiction thriller packed with tension, passion, and politics, [this book] offers a rare glimpse into a secretive world, illuminating a fascinating chapter of North Korea's history that helps explain how it became the hermetically sealed, intensely stage-managed country it remains today"--Amazon.com.
A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York
Timothy J. Gilfoyle · 480 pages
A Pickpocket's Tale is a fascinating true-crime story. Gilfoyle uses George Appo's unpublished memoirs to re-create the world of the nineteenth-century criminal in astonishing detail. George Appo was half Irish, half Chinese who became a pickpocket at the tender age of twelve. he was first arrested at age fourteen and sentenced to a year on a prison ship for juvenile offenders served . In and out
The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend
Glenn Frankel · 418 pages
In 1836 in East Texas, nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped by Comanches. She was raised by the tribe and eventually became the wife of a warrior. Twenty-four years after her capture, she was reclaimed by the U.S. cavalry and Texas Rangers and restored to her white family, to die in misery and obscurity. Cynthia Ann's story has been told and re-told over generations to become a foundatio
The Big Bad Book of Bill Murray: A Critical Appreciation of the World's Finest Actor
Robert Schnakenberg · 271 pages
He's the sort of actor who can do Hamlet and Charlie's Angels in the same year. He shuns managers and agents and once agreed to voice the part of Garfield because he mistakenly believed it was a Coen brothers film. Bill Murray's extraordinary career is rich with fascinating anecdotes, contradictions, and mystery, from his early success on Saturday Night Live and the biggest blockbusters of the 198
Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System
Sharon Waxman · 448 pages
Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
Mark Harris · 496 pages
The epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967-Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Doctor Doolittle, and Bonnie and Clyde-and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood, and America, foreverIt's the mid-1960s, and westerns, war movies and blockbuster musicals-Mary Poppins, The
Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud
Shaun Considine · 457 pages
Explosive, exhaustive and unsparing, the inside, tell-all story of the celebrated, long-term feud of Hollywood's two greatest screen legends, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.
City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s
Otto Friedrich · 495 pages
Close to being the last word of the golden age of the flicks. All the stars are here and more, but it is the author's perspective that makes this so interesting and captivating. Hollywood's power lay in its ability to create potent images that defined a nation's awareness of itself. But often the creators were unaware of how well they succeeded. The author here gives us the dream machine's layers
Hitchcock
François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock, Helen G. Scott · 311 pages
Conversations With Scorsese
Richard Schickel, Martin Scorsese · 435 pages
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
Peter Biskind · 506 pages
"Easy Riders, Raging Bulls vividly chronicles the exuberance and excess of the times: the startling success of Easy Rider and the equally alarming circumstances under which it was made, with drugs, booze, and violent rivalry between costars Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda dominating the set; how a small production company named BBS became the guiding spirit of the youth rebellion in Hollywood and ho
The Parade's Gone By...
Kevin Brownlow · 577 pages
Passing in review here is the silent film era and Mr. Brownlow has done a splendid job of vitalizing the past through interviews and personal research. Most of this material has never seen print before and the filmophile will go wild over reminiscences such as Joseph Henabery's (who assisted Griffith on Intolerance). And the snaps: Garbo who loved watching talking pictures in reverse but refused t
Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street
Michael Davis · 379 pages
The story of one of the most important and beloved shows on television—how it got started, nearly failed, and was saved by ElmoWhen the first episode aired on November 10, 1969, Sesame Street revolutionized the way education was presented to children on television. It has since become the longest-running children’s show in history, and today reaches 8 million preschoolers on 350 PBS stations and a
Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard
Richard Brody · 720 pages
"When Jean-Luc Godard, exemplary director of the French New Wave, wed the ideals of filmmaking to the realities of autobiography and current events, he changed the nature of cinema. Among the greatest cinematic innovations, Godard's films shift fluidly from fiction to documentary, from criticism to art. Similarly, his persona projects shifting images - cultural hero, impassioned loner, shrewd busi
Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations
Peter Evans, Ava Gardner · 293 pages
A self-portrait of the late film legend's golden-era Hollywood life traces her impoverished childhood in North Carolina through the heights of her career, sharing details of her relationships with such figures as Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, and George C. Scott.
Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz
Coyne S. Sanders, Thomas W. Gilbert · 386 pages
A dual biography of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball focuses on the star-crossed marriage that sired one of the most powerful production empires in television history but ended in disintegration.
Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend
Susan Orlean · 324 pages
Allegedly found in the ruins of a bombed-out dog kennel in France during World War I, then brought to Los Angeles by Lee Duncan, the soldier who found and trained him, by 1927 Rin Tin Tin had become Hollywood's number one box-office star. Susan Orlean's book--about the dog and the legend--is a poignant exploration of the enduring bond between humans and animals. It is also a richly textured histor