Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears

"Michael Schulman’s history of the Oscars doubles as a breezy history of the whole movie business – full of gossipy and delicious anecdotes – as well as a collection of perhaps forgotten truths about how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began and how it has changed. Who cared about winning and who didn’t, which surprises shook careers for good and for ill, and which campaigns majestically backfired? There is Harvey Weinstein, there are good and terrible ceremonies – including, yes, the botched Moonlight victory – and there is the counterculture that movies like Easy Rider represented. Schulman considers the awards’ terrible history with race through the stories of Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier and Halle Berry, and he zooms in on the blacklist that ended careers. The book is both juicy and informative."