Entertainment History

It was the splendor and the scandal of the age. In 1506, the ferociously ambitious Renaissance Pope Julius II tore down the most sacred shrine in Europe, the millennium-old St. Peter's Basilica built by the Emperor Constantine over the apostle's grave, to build a better basilica.

In the '60s and '70s, America's music scene was marked by raucous excess, reflected in the tragic overdoses of young superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. At the same time, the uplifting harmonies and sunny lyrics that propelled Karen Carpenter and her brother, Richard, to international fame belied a different sort of tragedy - the underconsumption that led to Karen's death at age 32 from the effects of an eating disorder.

In a masterpiece of historical detective work, Sarah Lewis exposes one of the most damaging lies in American history. There was a time when Americans were confronted with the fictions shoring up the nation’s racial regime and learned to disregard them. The true significance of this hidden history has gone unseen—until now. Groundbreaking and profoundly resonant, The Unseen Truth shows how visual tactics have long secured our regime of racial hierarchy in spite of its false foundations—and offers a way to begin to dismantle it.

Listen to This, which takes its title from a beloved 2004 essay in which Ross described his late-blooming discovery of pop music, showcases the best of Ross’s writing from more than a decade at The New Yorker. These pieces, dedicated to classical and popular artists alike, are at once erudite and lively.

Steely Dan's songs are exercises in fictional world-building. No one else in the classic-rock canon has conjured a more vivid cast of rogues and heroes, creeps and schmucks, lovers and dreamers and cold-blooded operators-or imbued their characters with so much humanity.

For music executive Mathew Knowles, the sensation that became Destiny’s Child began with his own - Beyoncé. From a unique vantage point, he not only watched but encouraged her dream alongside the ever-evolving phenomenon of the world’s most acclaimed girls group. Listeners get his insights from the mechanics of managing, motivating, and maneuvering talented children through a resistant industry; to parenting and attending to them in all other aspects. His accounts reveal a journey that let to both challenges and controversy underneath an unparalleled success.

In Camera Man, film critic Dana Stevens pulls the lens out from Keaton’s life and work to look at concurrent developments in entertainment, journalism, law, technology, the political and social status of women, and the popular understanding of addiction. With erudition and sparkling humor, Stevens hopscotches among disciplines to bring us up to the present day, when Keaton’s breathtaking (and sometimes life-threatening) stunts remain more popular than ever as they circulate on the internet in the form of viral gifs

Bob Marley's life is the stuff of legend. Raised in the slums of Kingston, Jamaica, Marley (1945-1981) wrote songs that inspired millions. So Much Things to Say tells Marley's life story like never before. Roger Steffens traveled with the Wailers and interviewed Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer extensively. Now, drawing on 40 years of intimate interviews with band members, family, lovers, and confidants - many speaking publicly for the first time - Steffens crafts a riveting oral history depicting Marley's life.

Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents features outrageous and uncensored profiles of the men in the White House - complete with hundreds of little-known, politically incorrect, and downright wacko facts.

Spanning from the classical sculpture of Ancient Rome to contemporary performance art, this guide provides a rich overview of art history, covering many topics explored in a history of art degrees.

“Playing changes”, in jazz parlance, has long referred to an improviser’s resourceful path through a chord progression. Playing Changes boldly expands on the idea, highlighting a host of significant changes - ideological, technological, theoretical, and practical - that jazz musicians have learned to navigate since the turn of the century. Nate Chinen, who has chronicled this evolution firsthand throughout his journalistic career, vividly sets the backdrop, charting the origins of jazz historicism and the rise of an institutional framework for the music.

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 foundational American tale.

Roger Scruton is a polymath. He has written authoritatively on a huge range of subjects from the environment to wine, from cosmology to the Middle East. He is also an accomplished musician (organ and piano) and a composer of works including an opera and a song cycle. This is Scruton’s second major work on music for Bloomsbury - the first being Understanding Music (Continuum, 2009).

Drawing on new research and enlivened by Touré's unique pop-cultural fluency, I Would Die 4 U relies on surprising and in-depth interviews with Prince's band members, former girlfriends, musicologists, and even Bible scholars to deconstruct the artist's life and work. Prince's baby boomer status allowed him to play a wise older brother to the latchkey kids of Generation X. Defying traditional categories of race, gender, and sexuality, he nonetheless presented a very traditional conception of religion and God in his music.

This epic cultural and historical odyssey unearths the full influence of occult traditions on rock and roll - from the Beatles to Black Sabbath - and shows how the marriage between mysticism and music changed our world.

Take a walk through almost any neighborhood in Manhattan and you’ll likely pass some of the most significant clubs in American music history. But you won’t know it—almost all of these venues have been demolished or repurposed, leaving no record of what they were, how they shaped music scenes, or their impact on the neighborhoods around them. This Must Be the Place examines how these scenes came together and fell apart—and shows how these communal artistic experiences are not just for rarefied geniuses but available to us all.

An unflinching confrontation of humanity’s dark side, Brian De Palma’s crime drama film Scarface gave rise to a cultural revolution upon its release in 1983. Its impact was unprecedented, making globe-spanning waves as a defining portrait of the gritty Miami street life. From Al Pacino’s masterful characterization of Tony Montana to the iconic “Say hello to my little friend,” Scarface maintains its reputation as an unwavering game changer in cult classic cinema.

Liszt once said that Mozart composed more bars than a trained copyist could write in a lifetime. Mozart's gift and skill with instruments was also remarkable as he mastered all of them except the harp. For example, no sooner had the clarinet been invented and introduced than Mozart began playing and composing for it. In addition to his many insights into Mozart's music, Johnson also challenges the many myths that have followed Mozart, including those about the composer's health, wealth, religion, and relationships.

Hello, I'm Pamela Nightingale, daughter of the late international best-selling author and radio personality, Earl Nightingale. I'd like to share with you the true-life story of my father and the personal secrets of his life, with behind-the-scenes details of how he discovered the Strangest Secret. In this time of uncertainty and difficulty for many, the time is right to release the inspirational example of how Earl Nightingale lived his life and overcame adversity and limitations to help others do the same. Join me and my cousins on the adventure of a lifetime.

From 1935 to 1939, the Federal Theatre Project staged over a thousand productions in 29 states that were seen by thirty million (or nearly one in four) Americans, two thirds of whom had never seen a play before. At its helm was an unassuming theater professor, Hallie Flanagan. It employed, at its peak, over twelve thousand struggling artists, some of whom, like Orson Welles and Arthur Miller, would soon be famous, but most of whom were just ordinary people eager to work again at their craft. The Playbook takes us through some of its most remarkable productions.