Arts & Entertainment

An exploration of American culture celebrates subjects ranging from the birth of the soap opera and the obsessiveness of modern fandom to the outing of gay church members and the influence of German exiles.

The lead singer for the band The Selecter looks back on 30 years in the male-dominated music industry, and recounts more personal stories — about being mixed-race, being adopted by a white couple, and tracing her biological roots.

A great blues guitarist chronicles his eventful life, from his modest upbringing in rural Louisiana to his rise to prominence in the Chicago blues scene to his becoming a lasting influence on famous musicians.

An oral history of a definitive era in television pays tribute to the producers, actors, and programs that established new understandings of broadcast networking, sharing insider perspectives on how NBC subsequently lost its dominant standing.

Follows the quest of a team of scientists to develop a computer so intelligent that it can beat the best of champions in the "Jeopardy" quiz show.

The legendary, award-winning singer, songwriter and pianist tells her life story — beginning with her childhood in Brooklyn, through her marriage to co-writer Gerry Goffin, her experiences as a mother, and what it was like to write and record Tapestry.

Recounts the author's experiences on frontier Houston as the only child of an alcoholic father and epileptic fanatical mother, describing a coming-of-age marked by honky-tonk barroom brawls, apocalyptic hurricanes and wild improvisations in the face of unpaid bills.

Presents a 1920 play of Eugene O'Neill—which revolves around a suicide attempt—believed for more than 90 years to have been lost after O'Neill cancelled production of the show and had seemingly had all copies destroyed.

The author of The Ice Storm and Garden State discusses his love of music and how it inspires his writing, including his infatuation with The Velvet Underground as well as more modern bands such as The Magnetic Fields, Wilco and The Pogues.

A first book by the chief editor of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir's Les Temps Modernes traces his life in film and journalism, describing his early experiences as an underground soldier in occupied Paris, his affair with de Beauvoir and the making of his seminal documentary Shoah.

A wide-ranging analysis of Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker describes the author's 30-year fascination with the film and evaluates how it reflects both European cinema and the deepest desires of the human psyche.