Summerweight memoir about Tartikoff's many years at the helm of NBC. Leerhsen, a senior writer at Newsweek, co-wrote Donald Trump's Trump: Surviving at the Top. Tartikoff apparently felt the need to get all this down before his new job as head of Paramount Pictures wipes it from mind. His triumphs at NBC lifted the network from the bottom of the rating pits and placed it at the top for six years running—a run not likely to be equaled. Not likely, Tartikoff thinks, because TV is about to change, with the box splintered into 150 or more channels with specialized programs for every taste. At the farewell dinner for outgoing NBC chairman Grant Tinker, Tinker told incoming Tartikoff that his own five years at the helm were ``like building sand castles. We build them elaborately and beautifully, but eventually they just get washed away.'' Tartikoff's greatest success was The Cosby Show—essentially his idea—which became his cornerstone sand castle. He shows us how he tried to provide ``maximum `viewer flow' from one time slot to the next'' and create ``perfect TV nights.'' Among the most enjoyable moments here are the endless ``pitches'' to Tartikoff of ideas for new shows—he estimates he's heard 30,000, including a two-and-a-half-hour pitch from Marlon Brando for a series based on Brando's vast library of home movies of himself swimming with bare-breasted Tahitian beauties. Tartikoff tells about his final lunch with Johnny Carson, and about how such NBC glories as Hill Street Blues, Cheers, The Golden Girls, The A-Team, Miami Vice, St. Elsewhere, and Family Ties were dreamed up, cast, and nurtured into being. Toothless—but its charm and celebrities and ideas about TV ensure a mild success before it, too, washes away.
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1992
ISBN: 0-394-58709-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1992
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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