The juicy, entertaining and informative behind-the-scenes story of a great American sitcom that left a lasting influence on popular TV.
In this delicious history of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, former Entertainment Weekly writer Armstrong (Why? Because We Still Like You: An Oral History of the Mickey Mouse Club, 2010) seems to have had the cooperation of just about everyone involved in the show’s making, and the results are riveting. Starting at the very beginning, she shows how this particular phenomenon was the result of a lot of elements coming together at the same time: a popular star, a creative team with a then-daring idea of a show about an independent woman, and, contrary to the fears of network bosses, a receptive viewership. Armstrong traces the evolution of the show, properly focusing on the creative team of James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, who knew exactly the character they wanted, what kind of comic tone they wanted to set, and were smart enough to hire great women writers who used their own lives and experiences to shape the world of Mary Richards and Rhoda Morganstern. Armstrong reveals how much of the show’s success had to do with unpredictable factors—e.g., a casting agent who happened to see Valerie Harper on stage and suddenly thought, “That’s our Rhoda." The author also gives great inside detail on all the major players in front of the camera, from the insecurities of actor Ted Knight, to the friction between Gavin MacLeod and Cloris Leachman, to a married and somewhat conservative star who wasn’t all that inclined to consider herself liberated.
For any fan of the show or TV history in general, this book is pure pleasure.Pub Date: May 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-5920-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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