On My Radar:

Tinderbox: HBO's Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers
by James Andrew Miller
Henry Holt
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Sex and the City, The Wire, Succession…HBO has long been the home of epic shows, as well as the source for brilliant new movies, news-making documentaries, and controversial sports journalism. By thinking big, trashing tired formulas, and killing off cliches long past their primes, HBO shook off the shackles of convention and led the way to a bolder world of content, opening the door to all that was new, original, and worthy of our attention.

In Tinderbox, award-winning journalist James Andrew Miller uncovers a bottomless trove of secrets and surprises, revealing new conflicts, insights, and analysis. As he did to great acclaim with SNL in Live from New York; with ESPN in Those Guys Have All the Fun; and with talent agency CAA in Powerhouse, Miller continues his record of extraordinary access to the most important voices, this time speaking with talents ranging from Abrams (J. J.) to Zendaya, as well as every single living president of HBO—and hundreds of other major players.



Over the course of more than 750 interviews with key sources, Miller reveals how fraught HBO’s journey has been, capturing the drama and the comedy off-camera and inside boardrooms as HBO created and mobilized a daring new content universe, and, in doing so, reshaped storytelling and upended our entertainment lives forever.

On My Radar:

Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency
by James Andrew Miller
Custom House
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

An astonishing—and astonishingly entertaining—behind-the-curtain history of Hollywood's transformation over the past five decades as seen through the agency at the heart of it all, from the #1 bestselling author of Live from New York and Those Guys Have All the Fun.

In 1975, five young employees of a sclerotic William Morris agency left to start their own, strikingly innovative talent agency. In the years to come, Creative Artists Agency would vault from its origins in a tiny office on the last block of Beverly Hills to become the largest, most imperial, groundbreaking, and star-studded agency Hollywood has ever seen—a company whose tentacles now spread throughout the world of movies, music, television, technology, advertising, sports, and investment banking far more than previously imagined.

Powerhouse is the fascinating, no-holds-barred saga of that hot-blooded ascent. Drawing on unprecedented and exclusive access to the men and women who built and battled CAA, as well as financial information never before made public, acclaimed author James Andrew Miller spins a tale of boundless ambition, ruthless egomania, ceaseless empire building, drugs, sex, greed, and personal betrayal. Powerhouse is also a story of prophetic brilliance, magnificent artistry, singular genius, entrepreneurial courage, strategic daring, foxhole brotherhood, and how one firm utterly transformed the entertainment business. Here are the real Star Wars—complete with a Death Star—told through the voices of those who were actually there. Packed with scores of stars from movies, television, music, and sports, as well as a tremendously compelling cast of agents, studio executives, network chiefs, league commissioners, hedge fund managers, tech CEOs, and media tycoons, Powerhouse is itself a Hollywood blockbuster of the most spectacular sort.