Books like Orson Welles's Last Movie — picked by fans

Harris focuses on Oscar night 1968 as four of the five films nominated for Best Picture evinced Hollywood’s reluctant affirmation of the American counterculture. These “pictures at a revolution,” as he terms them—Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and the Oscar winner In the Heat of the Night—signaled a necessary industry re-think, away from bloated old-Hollywood blockbusters (like Dr. Dolittle, the fifth nominee) and towards something more politically savvy and more hip. Harris does well to chronicle the backstage/behind-the-scenes histories of all five of these films.

We believe you can learn more from failure than success. Misfires don’t come much bigger than the 1990 adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s blockbuster novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. The movie busted nary a block, which only makes director Brian De Palma’s willingness to open up the process to reporter/critic Salamon more remarkable.

This visits every department—including our favorite, costume design—and underscores that no one knows if a movie will be a smash or a flop while they’re making it, so cast and crew work just as hard on both. We love the story of second-unit director Eric Schwab seizing the opportunity to prove himself.

Until I read Wasson’s provocative book, it was my understanding that Robert Towne crafted his Oscar-winning Chinatown script with guidance from his star (Jack Nicholson), producer (Robert Evans), and director (Roman Polanski), all of whom urged Towne to find a cogent narrative inside a sprawling concept embedded with powerful metaphors.

Then Wasson debunked the romantic myth of the genius scribe working in isolation by revealing not just the extent of Polanski’s notes but, even more explosively, the involvement of Edward Taylor as Towne’s “editor” and possible uncredited co-writer. I didn’t think it was possible for me to be shocked anymore by discoveries about my chosen field, but Wasson’s book reminded me that solo screenwriting credits are, at best, abstractions and, at worst, misnomers.

When I first read this years ago, it struck me as one of the great books about directing—Steven Spielberg’s ingenuity is a major focus. Revisiting it today, I realize it’s equally valuable as a screenwriting resource because serving a director’s vision is a huge part of the screenwriting life.

As Gottlieb recounts, making Jaws wasn’t stressful just because the mechanical shark kept malfunctioning but because of the pressure Spielberg was under to transform a pulpy bestseller into a crowd-pleasing spectacle. Gottlieb, the third writer to work on the project, offers his unique perspective on the all-too-common scenario of starting a production without a finished script.

Every time I return to this book, I discover another insight about screenwriting, about filmmaking, and about creativity.

Successful amphibious operations are hard to pull off. The Allies failure at Gallipoli is well known.

This book tells the story of Operation Albion, the successful German seizure of the Russian islands in the Baltic. A large part of the German Fleet was involved and had to overcome stubborn resistance by the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers of the Russian Fleet to break into the Gulf of Riga.

The Baltic is a little-known theatre of naval operations. The book draws on both Russian and German sources to show how the German Fleet and Army worked hand in hand to achieve a decisive victory in this theatre of the naval war.

One of the most popular explanations for the outbreak of war between 1918 and 1939 was that it had been caused by the ‘Merchants of Death,’ i.e. the large armaments firms and their financiers who profited from international animosity. Although the conspiracy theory tendency in this belief gradually dissipated, the idea that the arms race was a significant contributory factor leading to war has long featured on any list of ‘causes’.

David Stevenson’s exhaustive research in the archives of most of the combatant states has provided us with massive and fascinating detail on the thinking of those involved and the relationship between geopolitical ambitions, strategic calculations, and financial realities. His treatment makes for fascinating reading, enhanced by crisply argued interpretations of the role of military and naval preparedness in the crises that plagued prewar Europe.

This is the first novel I read about grieving families who commissioned photographers to search for the place where their loved one died, in order that a photo could be taken for them to have as a keepsake.

I love learning something new when I read a book and I discovered so much about the after-effects of losing someone without having knowledge of their last moments and a place to pay one’s respects. 

This is about Edie, a widow wanting answers about her husband who she believes might still be alive, despite being classed as ‘missing, presumed dead’ in 1917. She commissions her late husband’s brother to search for him and photograph his final resting place, if indeed there is one.

A wonderful, haunting story of enduring love and loss.

If there is one story to fire the imagination about naval action in the First World War, it is that of the German cruiser Emden and her crew. Her commander, Karl von Müller, showed skill and chivalrous humanity in equal measure.

Emden raided the Indian Ocean, pursued by numerous Allied warships, causing havoc to commerce. The cruise ended in an epic final action with the Australian cruiser Sydney. Part of the crew then made an audacious escape home across the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Desert.

Lochner’s research is thorough, making extensive use of archive material to tell the story. This is essential for writing well-informed history, but he also brings the crew and their adventures vividly to life.

Much of my background as a historian focuses on the First World War, and, as a result, I have a particular interest in the ‘invasion literature’ of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This is a particularly fun and interesting example in that it creates newspaper and press reports to help grant a level of tactile reality to the unfolding invasion of England.

Books like this had a significant impact on British popular culture and mindset before 1914, and Le Queux’s decision to make his fictional work appear to be nonfiction where possible works incredibly well and, as it was serialized in the Daily Mail newspaper, he adapted the text to include many locations readers either lived or would recognize!

If we are not killer apes, if war is not inevitable, how does it happen? Obviously because people were not up to the challenges of maintaining peace. Margaret MacMillan’s riveting account of the events leading up to the Great War, the First World War, shows in all-too-clear detail how not to go about avoiding war. The German Kaiser, Wilhelm, was petty and boastful and altogether too proud and confident of his totally inadequate abilities. The Tsar of Russia, Nicholas, was cut from the same cloth. But whereas Wilhelm made up his mind quickly and then was unmovable, Nicholas could never make up his mind. Between them, helped by other inadequates in places of high status and power, millions of young men lay dead on the fields of Flanders, in Northern France.