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Guaranteed to keep you up long after prime time, "The Box" re-creates the old-time TV years through more than three hundred interviews with those who invented, manufactured, advertised, produced, directed, wrote, and acted in them. Their reminiscences are intertwined with a chronological narrative that tells the technological, business, and entertainment stories--from pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth, through the Golden Age of comedy and drama, to FCC chairman Newt Minow's historic speech declaring t...

Winner, 2012 Council for European Studies Book AwardWinner, 2012 Center for Austrian Studies Book PrizeShortlist, 2011 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize (ASEEES)The 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia brought an end to the Prague Spring and its promise of "socialism with a human face." Before the invasion, Czech reformers had made unexpected use of television to advance political and social change. In its aftermath, Communist Party leaders employed the medium to achieve "normalization," pitching t...

Morecambe and Wise are perhaps the best loved and most fondly remembered of all British comedy acts. They were the first truly great double act in Britain and, although many have tried to emulate them, no one has yet succeeded in replacing them in the hearts of the country. Despite his untimely death 18 years ago, Eric Morecambe's popularity continues to grow. In this book, Eric's son, Gary Morecambe, takes us on a personal journey through the life of "Britain's greatest comedian of the twentiet...

Fans of Sherlock Holmes will delight to investigate Victorian England, a world where crimes large and small abound and where dark corners and well-lit drawing rooms alike hide villainy. Through the enduring eye of Sherlock Holmes, noted historian Jeremy Black traces how Holmes and his milieu evolved in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s books and how Holmes continues to resonate today. Black explores the context of Doyle’s ideas and stories and why they struck such a chord with readers in London, and ult...

Edgar Allan Poe exerted a profound influence on many aspects of 20th-century culture, and continues to inspire composers, filmmakers, writers and artists. Popularly thought of as a ""horror"" writer, Poe was also a philosophical aesthete, a satirist, a hoaxer, a psychologist and a prophet of the anxieties and preoccupations of the modern world. Alphabetically arranged, this book explores Poe's major works both in their own right and in terms of their impact on others, including Baudelaire, who t...