"From her creation of the first 'Approval Matrix' in New York magazine in 2004 to her Pulitzer Prize-winning columns for The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum has known all along that what we watch is who we are. In this collection, including several substantive, never-before-published essays, Nussbaum writes about her passion for television beginning with Buffy--as she writes, a show that was so much more than its critical assessment--the evolution of female...

Published to coincide with the show's twentieth anniversary, this definitive oral history of The O.C., which paved the way for a new generation of iconic teen soaps, features interviews with the cast and crew and never-before-seen photos, providing a behind-the-scenes look at how the show was made--and its legacy today.

"All in the Family creator Norman Lear takes fans behind the scenes of the groundbreaking sitcom on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. The face of television was changed forever in 1971 with the premiere of All in the Family. The working-class Bunker family of Queens, New York--lovable bigot Archie (Carroll O'Connor), his long-suffering "dingbat" wife Edith (Jean Stapleton), their liberal daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers), and son-in-law Mike "Meathead"...

Garvey and Murphy families come together as they desperately grasp for a system of belief to better explain what defies explanation. The world is crackling with the energy of something big about to happen, a corresponding bookend to the Sudden Departure that sent them all spinning years earlier, bringing their journey Down Under.

Television comedy has long been on the frontline in how America evolves on social issues. There is something about comedy that makes difficult issues more palatable-with humor an effective device for presenting ideas that lead to social change. From I Love Lucy which introduced the first television pregnancy to Will & Grace, which normalized gay characters, the situation comedy has challenged the public to revisit social mores and reshape how we think...

"In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the landscape of television began an unprecedented transformation. While the networks continued to chase the lowest common denominator, a wave of new shows, first on premium cable channels like HBO and then basic cable networks like FX and AMC, dramatically stretched television's narrative inventiveness, emotional resonance, and artistic ambition. No longer necessarily concerned with creating always-likable characters,...

"We hear everywhere that we are in a golden era of television. Prestige dramas are the stars of streaming services and cable networks alike, luring viewers into binge watching hours of programming with writing, production values, and acting talent typically associated with feature-length films. In Second Lives, Michael Szalay focuses our attention on a highly influential subset of prestige television that he calls the black-market drama, and he tethers...