Here are 100 books that Legitimating Television fans have personally recommended if you like
Legitimating Television.
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I like understanding television as culturally situated. Television is constructed along a number of sites: cultural, institutional, ideological, historical, or via the different ways audiences understand it. Interrogating television and what it does as a medium was historically relevant because it was a mass medium. But how can we evaluate the medium in times of highly fragmented audiences? Because of this, exploring Netflix as a new form of ‘television’ has become so important to me. The authors all try to get to terms with how television has changed over its short existence. This helps us understand the medium better, as well as our current moment.
Dunleavy explores what complexity means for contemporary ‘quality’ TV. She focusses on the narrative structures, creative strategies, and style of contemporary television.
For me, what stands out about this book is how it explores the interrelationship between recent technological changes and what we understand as television. This results in a redefinition of television.
When writing the second edition of my book, I found the different ways people have conceptualized contemporary television especially important.
This book examines the creative strategies, narrative characteristics, industrial practices and stylistic tendencies of complex serial drama. Exemplified by shows like HBO's The Sopranos, AMC's Mad Men and Breaking Bad, Showtime's Dexter, and Netflix's Stranger Things, complex serials are distinguished by their conceptual originality, narrative complexity, transgressive lead characters and serial allure. As a drama form that continues to expand and diversify in today's television, HBO's Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones, Netflix's Orange Is the New Black and Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale provide further examples. Dunleavy investigates the strategies that underpin the innovations, influence and success of complex serial…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I like understanding television as culturally situated. Television is constructed along a number of sites: cultural, institutional, ideological, historical, or via the different ways audiences understand it. Interrogating television and what it does as a medium was historically relevant because it was a mass medium. But how can we evaluate the medium in times of highly fragmented audiences? Because of this, exploring Netflix as a new form of ‘television’ has become so important to me. The authors all try to get to terms with how television has changed over its short existence. This helps us understand the medium better, as well as our current moment.
Warner’s book is especially important to understand how colorblind casting works in contemporary television, allowing for television to use the visual signifier of race without necessarily narrativizing marginalization.
I love this book for the way it critically analyses the practice of colorblind TV casting, which until recently was understood as a way television can achieve diversity, but that is only visual diversity and doesn’t allow us to learn about the various barriers Black people in the USA face.
This book fills a significant gap in the critical conversation on race in media by extending interrogations of racial colorblindness in American television to the industrial practices that shape what we see on screen. Specifically, it frames the practice of colorblind casting as a potent lens for examining the interdependence of 21st century post-racial politics and popular culture. Applying a 'production as culture' approach to a series of casting case studies from American primetime dramatic television, including ABC's Grey's Anatomy and The CW's The Vampire Diaries, Kristen Warner complicates our understanding of the cultural processes that inform casting and expounds…
I like understanding television as culturally situated. Television is constructed along a number of sites: cultural, institutional, ideological, historical, or via the different ways audiences understand it. Interrogating television and what it does as a medium was historically relevant because it was a mass medium. But how can we evaluate the medium in times of highly fragmented audiences? Because of this, exploring Netflix as a new form of ‘television’ has become so important to me. The authors all try to get to terms with how television has changed over its short existence. This helps us understand the medium better, as well as our current moment.
This is a short book in which Newman explores the changes in what the term ‘video’ means.
The term is closely intertwined with the history of television, describing first television broadcasts and then how taping was used to bridge the time differences between the American east and west coasts. The term then described the ways home video revolutionized how video was used in the private sphere. Today, we receive videos as the digital snippets we see on YouTube or the short clips we post on social media.
I like Newman’s work in general. But this book tells us so much about TV history in the US; I find it an incredibly fascinating work.
Since the days of early television, video has been an indispensable part of culture, society, and moving-image media industries. Over the decades, it has been an avant-garde artistic medium, a high-tech consumer gadget, a format for watching movies at home, a force for democracy, and the ultimate, ubiquitous means of documenting reality. In the twenty-first century, video is the name we give all kinds of moving images. We know it as an adaptable medium that bridges analog and digital, amateur and professional, broadcasting and recording, television and cinema, art and commercial culture, and old media and new digital networks. In…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I like understanding television as culturally situated. Television is constructed along a number of sites: cultural, institutional, ideological, historical, or via the different ways audiences understand it. Interrogating television and what it does as a medium was historically relevant because it was a mass medium. But how can we evaluate the medium in times of highly fragmented audiences? Because of this, exploring Netflix as a new form of ‘television’ has become so important to me. The authors all try to get to terms with how television has changed over its short existence. This helps us understand the medium better, as well as our current moment.
This book came out a few months after the first edition of my book, and I remember being really frustrated because it added so many important ideas.
I still find its interrogation of interfaces and how they interact, open as different tabs, intriguing. Johnson focusses on how online TV functions within an internet ecosystem. This leads to interesting ideas about what TV distributed via the internet means.
With growth in access to high-speed broadband and 4G, and increased ownership of smartphones, tablets and internet-connected television sets, the internet has simultaneously begun to compete with and transform television. Online TV argues that these changes create the conditions for an emergent internet era that challenges the language and concepts that we have to talk about television as a medium.
In a wide-ranging analysis, Catherine Johnson sets out a series of conceptual frameworks designed to provide a clearer language with which to analyse the changes to television in the internet era and to bring into focus the power dynamics of…
I’m a professional screenwriter with a passion for story structure. I’ve worked on film & TV projects for more than 25 years – not only as a writer for independent producers and studios such as Warner and Universal – but also as a development exec and creative consultant. Over time, I was shocked to see how many talented storytellers felt stuck between prescriptive paradigms and a “seat-of-the-pants” approach. So I set out to fill that void and defined a more flexible yet powerful method in my first book, Screenwriting Unchained, which I’ve now enthusiastically applied to TV series. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
This fantastic book is full of useful tips on the craft, contains many interviews and is thoroughly documented.
It’s especially relevant for streaming. I love to discuss theory, but one of the best ways to learn is from practitioners. That’s why I’m a big fan of interviews. Not only do they give you a chance to learn from the masters, but they’re also inspiring. I always go back to my own writing with more energy when I’ve listened to someone talk passionately about their work.
Neil Landau’s book is a great resource, and it was very hard to decide between this one and The TV Showrunner’s Roadmap, another excellent work of his featuring interviews.
TV Writing On Demand: Creating Great Content in the Digital Era takes a deep dive into writing for today's audiences, against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving TV ecosystem. Amazon, Hulu and Netflix were just the beginning. The proliferation of everything digital has led to an ever-expanding array of the most authentic and engaging programming that we've ever seen. No longer is there a distinction between broadcast, cable and streaming. It's all content. Regardless of what new platforms and channels will emerge in the coming years, for creators and writers, the future of entertainment has never looked brighter.
Over my lifetime I have been involved in myriad policy issues running from 1970s anti-inflation policies, through the creation of NAFTA in the 1980s, to dealing with climate change in the 2000s. My interest and that of my co-author in technological change and economic growth entailed involvement in innovation policy. We are particularly worried because many citizens have no realisation of the important part that public policy has played in technological changes. Ignorance of this is dangerous in that it may lead legislatures to inhibit the public sector’s future role in such developments without which we have a much-diminished chance of dealing with climate change and holding our own in international economic competition.
While all the books listed earlier provide detailed, in-depth, case studies of public-private sector cooperation in developing selected new technologies, the last two chapters of this book provide necessarily brief coverages of the myriad ways in which this cooperation had been successfully manifested beyond encouraging specific technologies.
Although the book’s main purpose is to show how a series of important technologies have transformed economic, social, and political life over the millennia, the last two chapters show how knowledge of these transformations sheds light on the wider use of public policy to achieve economic goals.
While many public initiatives have succeeded, others have failed. The authors isolate the reasons for these successes and failures and offer their template for designing and administering policies that are more likely to succeed than fail.
This book examines the long term economic growth that has raised the West's material living standards to levels undreamed of by counterparts in any previous time or place. The authors argue that this growth has been driven by technological revolutions that have periodically transformed the West's economic, social and political landscape over the last 10,000 years and allowed the West to become, until recently, the world's only dominant technological force.
Unique in the diversity of the analytical techniques used, the book begins with a discussion of the causes and consequences of economic growth and technological change. The authors argue that…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
For as long I can remember, I’ve been an ideas guy. I even like the idea of ideas…I guess that makes me a meta-idea guy. But not just any ideas. Ideas that achieve the maximum impact with the minimum means. Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote, “I wouldn’t give a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity, but I’d give my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Creative ideas are the main event of the imagination, and the simpler the better. I've written and published several books, hundreds of articles and blogs, and even had dozens of songs published. But by far my favorite creative accomplishment is winning the New Yorker cartoon caption contest in 2008.
I love contrarian thinking. It’s by definition creative…new, novel, useful. That’s what David Burkus does with this book. There are a lot of conventional thoughts about creativity and the generation of innovative ideas that are held out as universal truths, but just aren’t. True, that is. David takes them all to task, pokes holes in them with science and logic and good old thoughtful insight, and dispels an entire family of mythology...misconceptions all relating to creative thinking: brainstorming, collaborating, incentivizing, and about a dozen more. Prepare to have much of your current understanding of creativity shaken.
How to get past the most common myths about creativity to design truly innovative strategies We tend to think of creativity in terms reminiscent of the ancient muses: divinely-inspired, unpredictable, and bestowed upon a lucky few. But when our jobs challenge us to be creative on demand, we must develop novel, useful ideas that will keep our organizations competitive. The Myths of Creativity demystifies the processes that drive innovation. Based on the latest research into how creative individuals and firms succeed, David Burkus highlights the mistaken ideas that hold us back and shows us how anyone can embrace a practical…
I have written four books of popular science, and edited a fifth collection of my favorite science writers. I have been a judge for the 2022 Science in Society Book Awards for the National Association of Science Writers. I taught popular science writing for 34 years to undergraduates and graduates alike. Most of all, I love the wonder and awe of understanding the world around us.
This is a fascinating and compelling journey through the most neglected and significant public health innovation since vaccines and nutritional guidelines, the modern toilet.
Author Chelsea Flanagan takes us on a wild ride through the history of this neglected and highly significant home appliance, including contemporary efforts to make toilets more environmentally friendly and even less expensive. Relatively inexpensive, safe sewage saves millions of lives a year, more than all our modern medicines combined.
Finalist for the 2022 NASW Science in Society Journalism Award Longlisted for the 2022 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books
From an award-winning science journalist, a “deeply researched, entertaining, and impassioned exploration of sanitation” (Nature) and the future of the toilet—for fans of popular science bestsellers by Mary Roach.
Most of us do not give much thought to the centerpiece of our bathrooms, but the toilet is an unexpected paradox. On the one hand, it is a modern miracle: a ubiquitous fixture in a vast sanitation system that has helped add decades to the human life span by…
As a techno-optimist, I believe that technology can make us better! Technology should make us stronger and healthier, technology should enable us to do things we couldn’t do without it, and technology should create an equitable future. In 25 years, I want superhuman eyesight, joints, and memory. I want to travel with family and friends both physically and virtually through the metaverse. And I want to make sure that all of our data is used responsibly and ethically to optimize our home and community. All of the books I selected (including mine!) build on these themes painting a picture of a future that is optimistic, and show us how we can be active participants in creating the future we want to see.
Tan Le is a good friend and kickass tech entrepreneur who founded the neurotech company Emotiv.
She talks with the top neuroscientists and technologists in the area of brain-computer interfaces. But what makes it relatable is how Tan weaves in her own story. Tan is a Vietnamese-born Australian and talks about her own journey creating and developing an EEG headset and growing a tech company.
I recommend this book because I absolutely believe that technology can improve our brain and brain-computer interfaces are our future!
'A highly engaging guided tour through the frontiers of what science knows about how the brain works, how to extend its power and how to fix it when it's broken.' - David Gillespie, author of Sweet Poison and Teen Brain
'Tan Le writes with optimism and compassion about the extraordinary evolution of brain technology. Totally inspiring!' - Wendy McCarthy AO
Technology now allows us to unlock the amazing potential of the human brain in ways we never dreamt were possible. Join award-winning inventor and entrepreneur Tan Le as she criss-crosses the globe, introducing the brilliant neurotech innovators and neuroscientists at…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I have firsthand experience in some of the harshest environments on the planet. I’ve survived sub-zero temperatures, hurricane force winds, sudden avalanches…and a career on Wall Street. I served as team captain of the first American Women’s Everest Expedition, climbed the highest peak on every continent (the “7 Summits”), and skied to both the North and South Poles. I spent four years as an adjunct professor at the US Military Academy at West Point. Awarded the 2019 Ellis Island Medal of Honor. I have a beer named after me. I love dogs. Three heart surgeries could not slow me down. NY Times bestselling author of On the Edge. I’ve had some high profile failures and have been the butt of late night talk show opening monologue jokes. Come at me!
So often we get “stuck” because we think we have to come up with a really big idea in order to have an impact and to achieve substantial results. Nope! Linkner explains why it is a mistake to put pressure on ourselves to “Go Big.” It’s often the little ideas that lead to the best, most significant results. This book chronicles all kinds of amazingly accomplished people – Lin Manuel Miranda, Lady Gaga, Steven Spielberg, etc. Linkner’s story-telling will convince you to focus on small things and will help you unlock your creativity.
A surprisingly simple approach to help everyday people become everyday innovators.
The pressure to generate big ideas can feel overwhelming. We know that bold innovations are critical in these disruptive and competitive times, but when it comes to breakthrough thinking, we often freeze up.
Instead of shooting for a $10-billion payday or a Nobel Prize, the most prolific innovators focus on Big Little Breakthroughs-small creative acts that unlock massive rewards over time. By cultivating daily micro-innovations, individuals and organizations are better equipped to tackle tough challenges and seize transformational opportunities.
How did a convicted drug dealer launch and scale a…
