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Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears
by Michael Schulman
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The author of the New York Times bestseller Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep returns with a lively history of the Academy Awards, focusing on the brutal battles, the starry rivalries, and the colorful behind-the-scenes drama. America does not have royalty. It has the Academy Awards. For nine decades, perfectly coiffed starlets, debonair leading men, and producers with gold in their eyes have chased the elusive Oscar. What began as an industry banquet in 1929 has now exploded into a hallowed ceremony, complete with red carpets, envelopes, and little gold men. But don't be fooled by the pomp: the Oscars, more than anything, are a battlefield, where the history of Hollywood--and of America itself--unfolds in dramas large and small.…
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"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."