David Thomson

A book that sees Hollywood as an idea, a trick, a religion even that swept the world, a book that knows what the bosses did, and why and how, but which also feels the impact on the mass audiences in the dark auditoriums. There isn't a book that explains - even at a basic level - how the business, the money, of pictures operates. THE WHOLE EQUATION takes the history and describes the grand panorama so that the reader knows how he or she fitted in, along with Bogart, the Marx Brothers and Daryl Zanuck. The business is the neglected aspect of the story, neglected because its truths threaten the alleged magic, the romance of the movies. Yet, the money is the true sexual secret of Hollywood, and David Thomson leaves the reader quite clear, that amid all the hype and pretension, we should always 'follow the money'.

A historical odyssey through the Hollywood film industry ranges from the silent movie era to the present day, exploring the ways in which movies both shape and are shaped by American culture; discussing the contributions of such pioneers as Griffith, Chaplin, Selznick, and Spielberg; profiling Hollywood's leading citizens, past and present; and more. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

The grim story of five men who died while returning from an expedition to the South Pole is told through the diary entries of the last survivor of the group, Robert Falcon Scott, in an epic account of the fierce competition to reach the South Pole. Original.

This is Volume XIII of eighteen in a series on Political Sociology. Originally published in 1945, this books makes a systematic survey and analysis, as objective as possible, of the tendencies most likely to govern peace-making. The authors intended to avoid making any specific recommendations of their own as to how the labours of peace-making should be undertaken, and to confine themselves to a study of how they were likely to be undertaken in the light of past experience, contemporary proposals, and the present alignment of political powers in the world. In the process of study, discussion and writing, all three authors arrived at certain more definite conclusions. At the same time, the course of events and the increasingly clear trend of official policies seemed to justify more positive assertions and more constructive suggestions than had at first been thought possible. The book, therefore, takes its present hybrid form: of systematic analysis carried forward to certain statements and even recommendations.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year "Easily the best book on Orson Welles." --The New Yorker Orson Welles arrived in Hollywood as a boy genius, became a legend with a single perfect film, and then spent the next forty years floundering. But Welles floundered so variously, ingeniously, and extravagantly that he turned failure into "a sustaining tragedy"--his thing, his song. Now the prodigal genius of the American cinema finally has the biographer he deserves. For, as anyone who has read his novels and criticism knows, David Thomson is one of our most perceptive and splendidly opinionated writers on film. In Rosebud, Thomson follows the wild arc of Welles's career, from The War of the Worlds broadcast to the triumph of Citizen Kane, the mixed triumph of The Magnificent Ambersons, and the strange and troubling movies that followed. Here, too, is the unfolding of the Welles persona--the grand gestures, the womanizing, the high living, the betrayals. Thomson captures it all with a critical acumen and stylistic dash that make this book not so much a study of Welles's life and work as a glorious companion piece to them. "Insightful, controversial, and highly readable--Rosebud is biography at its best." --Cleveland Plain Dealer

Woodbrook is a rare house that gives its name to a small, rural area in Ireland, not far from the old port of Sligo. He stayed for ten years. This memoir, acknowledged as a masterpiece, grew out of two great loves - for Woodbrook and for Phoebe, his pupil.

A history of Europe since Napoleon, covering all of the main topics of that period.

Set in the 1920s, this marvellously sensitive autobiography recreates the varied community of Nairn, with its fishermen and townsfolk, its crofters and its prosperous upper-middle-classes.