In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were only three major television networks broadcasting original programs and news. And there was only one Harlan Ellison taking them all to task in a series of weekly essays he wrote for the countercultural, underground newspaper, the Los Angeles Free Press, a.k.a. "The Freep." For nearly four years, he channel surfed through the mire of ABC, CBS, and NBC, finding little of value but much to critique. No one offered a more astute analysis of the idiot box's influence on American culture, or its effects on the intelligence and psyche of viewers.The Other Glass Teat: Further Essays of Opinion on the Subject of Television collects Ellison's final fifty columns, presenting his thoughts on everything from dramas and sitcoms to game shows and roundtable discussions, unleashing his fury against sponsors, the nightly news, and the broadcasts of President Nixon--warning readers about the commander-in-chief's war against the media long before the Watergate scandal broke. As television has evolved into wireless streaming services and digital interactions on portable devices, Ellison's timeless rage against the machine has become prophecy. His plea to unplug is an even more necessary call to action in the face of the twenty-first century's media onslaught. Also available: The Glass Teat: Essays of Opinion on the Subject of Television

    The directors are Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra, Vincente Minnelli, George Cukor, Howard Hawks, William A. Wellman, King Vidor, and Raoul Walsh. Speaking with them, Mr. Schickel found in these men a special quality: "They felt in their bones the character and quality of a vanished America." There was something valuable to be learned from them, not merely about the cinema but about the conduct of life. Each of these directors created a canon of work that even today sustains critical analysis without sacrificing popular appeal. Each maintained his artistic integrity while working in an atmosphere generally credited with ruining rather than nurturing talent. Their attitudes, Mr. Schickel writes in his introduction, were "composed of a toughness that was never harsh, a pride in achievement that was never boastful, a self-reliance and an acceptance of the difficulties under which they had labored which contained neither self-pity nor a desire to blame others for the things that had gone wrong." Rich in behind-the-scenes stories about such modern classics as It Happened One Night, Dawn Patrol, The Champ, Born Yesterday, Father of the Bride, and Shadow of a Doubt, as well as in anecdotes about the men and women of Hollywood, this book is an enduring tribute to the men who made the movies. With 33 black-and-white photographs. "Immensely readable and richly informative...it provides a real education in just how movies are made.... One of the best introductions to the cinema that one could ask for."-Library Journal.

    The year was 1951. Dean had recently arrived in Manhattan in search of Broadway stardom. Sheridan was a tall, graceful aspiring dancer. They met one rainy afternoon in the parlor of the Rehearsal Club, a chaperoned boardinghouse for young actresses -- and before long Dizzy and Jimmy were inseparable. Together they hunted for jobs, haunted all-night bars and diners, and gloried in the innocent rebellion of early-'50s bohemian New York. Dizzy Sheridan and James Dean were lovers; they lived together; as even ardent Dean fans may be surprised to learn, they were engaged to be married. But when Dean began to find success on the Broadway stage and then was lured to Hollywood, the couple parted amid tears and broken dreams -- dreams that would be dashed forever when Dean died in a car crash in 1955, not long after seeing Dizzy for the last time.Dizzy & Jimmy marks the first time Liz Sheridan has written about this joyous yet ill-starred romance. She brings us closer than we have ever been to the vibrant young actor before he became a Hollywood icon, capturing his unstudied charm, his complicated psyche, the spontaneous delight he took from the world around him, and the passion he invested in his work and life. It is a journey that takes in many locales, from Dean's boyhood home in Fairmount, Indiana, to Sheridan's recuperative travels through the Caribbean after their breakup. But at its heart Dizzy & Jimmy is the story of a love affair with Manhattan -- of nights spent stealing kisses in Times Square, sharing a walkup in the Hargrave Hotel, dancing after hours beneath the stars in Grand Central Station. And in Sheridan's bittersweet, embraceable telling, it becomes a story no reader, Dean fan or otherwise, will soon forget.