Warner Bros

July 4, 2016
Prolific film critic and historian Thomson (How to Watch a Movie) ambitiously endeavors to map the history of television in this illustrated volume, but for those who don’t admire the author’s sauntering style, the results will be less than satisfying. Compiled into thematic chapters with catchy titles such as “The Sit and the Situation,” “The Loneliness of the Role Model,” and “Women, Wives, and Wonderers,” it promises a fresh and practical analysis of the medium but lacks depth. The book looks at a wide assortment of subjects, including stars Donna Reed, Lucille Ball, Bill Cosby, and Jon Stewart, as well as hit shows such as MASH, Law & Order, Seinfeld, and Breaking Bad. However, its operating principle seems to be “throw it at the wall and see what sticks.” The author has intriguing historical tidbits to share in this series of loosely organized essays, but his genuine insights are obscured by the slapdash narrative. This weightless study improves whenever the author’s dry humor comes to the fore. Casual readers should enjoy this brisk read, but anyone expecting a comprehensive consideration of the medium will have to look elsewhere.

August 1, 2016

In the 1960s, communication theorist Marshall McLuhan famously declared that the "medium is the message," recognizing that the media formats used to distribute content are as influential as the content's messages. Film critic Thomson (How To Watch a Movie; Moments That Made the Movies) certainly prescribes to McLuhan's theory as he turns away from his usual medium of choice, the big screen, and tackles the history of the "elephant" in our living rooms--television. This is not an appraisal of hit TV shows and their players, although there is some of that, but rather a sharp analysis of its impact on collective consciousness. Thomson also provides valuable insight into the different organizational and philosophical structures of British and American TV, i.e., socialized vs. commercial productions and how that affects programming. VERDICT Thomson's discussion of a "crowded medium" can feel haphazard at times, and frequent references to current political figures seem tacked on in an otherwise readable examination of this pervasive medium over the past 60 years.--Amanda Westfall, Emmet O'Neal P.L., Mountain Brook, AL

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

The article in the subtitle of this book is telling. The eminent film writer offers not a definitive or comprehensive history of TV but a personal celebration of his particular fascinations and a provocative consideration of the ways in which the very mechanics of the medium affect the audience, both as individuals and as a mass culture.In chapters often focusing on slightly left-field topics, including the problem of "role models" and the psychological effects of the commercial break, Thomson (How to Watch a Movie, 2015, etc.) organizes the book thematically rather than chronologically. This organization suits his allusive, digressive style, as he analyzes the ways in which TV's unique qualities--endless variety, constant availability, and insidious tendency toward narcotized reassurance, to name a few--shape and contextualize viewers' understanding of the world. By the author's reckoning, the influence of TV on human experience is so profound that we perch on a precipice of complete unreality (or virtual reality), existing only in relation to the screen; in his formulation, the "elephant in the room" of TV's primacy has "become the room." Thomson's insights are typically unsparing and acute, and while many of the implications of his argument are troubling, his love and admiration for the best of TV--Breaking Bad gets high marks, and no Thomson fan will be surprised to find multiple appreciations of Angie Dickinson--are palpable. When it suits his purpose, the author delves into more straightforward histories of institutions such as PBS and the BBC, and he provides memorable sketches of figures from Lucy Ricardo to Larry David ("David has as confused an attitude to the public as Charlie Chaplin had. But like Charlie he has found release and self-love in performing. He is maybe the most fascinating awful person on television"), but this is not merely a reference book. It's a love letter and a warning, beautifully written and deeply disquieting. A bracing, essential engagement with the ramifications of our lives before the small screen. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from September 1, 2016
The article in the subtitle of this book is telling. The eminent film writer offers not a definitive or comprehensive history of TV but a personal celebration of his particular fascinations and a provocative consideration of the ways in which the very mechanics of the medium affect the audience, both as individuals and as a mass culture.In chapters often focusing on slightly left-field topics, including the problem of "role models" and the psychological effects of the commercial break, Thomson (How to Watch a Movie, 2015, etc.) organizes the book thematically rather than chronologically. This organization suits his allusive, digressive style, as he analyzes the ways in which TV's unique qualities--endless variety, constant availability, and insidious tendency toward narcotized reassurance, to name a few--shape and contextualize viewers' understanding of the world. By the author's reckoning, the influence of TV on human experience is so profound that we perch on a precipice of complete unreality (or virtual reality), existing only in relation to the screen; in his formulation, the "elephant in the room" of TV's primacy has "become the room." Thomson's insights are typically unsparing and acute, and while many of the implications of his argument are troubling, his love and admiration for the best of TV--Breaking Bad gets high marks, and no Thomson fan will be surprised to find multiple appreciations of Angie Dickinson--are palpable. When it suits his purpose, the author delves into more straightforward histories of institutions such as PBS and the BBC, and he provides memorable sketches of figures from Lucy Ricardo to Larry David ("David has as confused an attitude to the public as Charlie Chaplin had. But like Charlie he has found release and self-love in performing. He is maybe the most fascinating awful person on television"), but this is not merely a reference book. It's a love letter and a warning, beautifully written and deeply disquieting. A bracing, essential engagement with the ramifications of our lives before the small screen.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 1, 2016
Although esteemed film critic Thomson (How to Watch a Movie, 2015) calls this a biography, readers will not find it a chronological account of the birth and rise of television. Instead, Thomson closely examines the medium's cultural impact by taking a largely thematic approach to revealing just how pervasive it has become in our lives. The result is a somewhat anecdotal study that is at its best when Thomson illustrates the way television has given presidents and presidential candidates enormous access to their constituencies or how major events, like the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald and 9/11, have become heightened and deeply personal via repeated broadcasts into our living rooms. Readers seeking extended analysis of their favorite shows had best look elsewhere. Though Thomson does examine the impact of some of the greats, such as I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and The Sopranos as well as some forgotten gems, his focus is much broader and more complex. This is a large, lavishly illustrated, erudite, and richly analytical look at television and its influence.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

Starred review from June 26, 2017
Film critic and historian Thomson (Television: A Biography) returns with a masterful look at one of early Hollywood’s preeminent families and the studio they built on their name. This story of Sam, Albert, Harry, and Jack Warner is the latest in Yale’s Jewish Lives series, and in it Thomson is just as at home writing biography as he is chronicling the institutional history of the Warner Bros. studio. He does an admirable job of using the studio’s films to examine the family’s internal dynamics, early in the text setting up a particularly trenchant comparison of the Warner siblings’ rivalries—which culminated in Jack seizing control of the company from his brothers, and possibly triggering Harry’s fatal heart attack—to that of Aaron and Cal in Elia Kazan’s adaptation of Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Other characters beyond the Warners themselves float in and out of the text, the meatiest cameos going to two of the studio’s most famous contract players, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, both of whom fought the studio’s control tooth and nail. Thomson has an encyclopedic knowledge of film history, demonstrated here by the familiarity with which he relates his subject. Anything new from Thomson is worth taking notice of, and this book is no exception.

June 15, 2017
The colorful history of the renowned Warner Bros. film studio and the brothers who founded it in the early 1920s.In the latest entry in the publisher's Jewish Lives series, renowned film scholar Thomson (Television: A Biography, 2016, etc.) explores the lives of the Jewish immigrant siblings who reinvented themselves as the Warner Brothers. The author explores the contributions of each of the brothers, but the most notable character is Jack Warner (1892-1978), a successfully intuitive studio head and quintessential Hollywood scoundrel who would go on to achieve one of the most lucrative careers in the business. There have been plenty of books about the studio and the brothers, and their Jewish immigrant story has already been exhaustively recounted in Neil Gabler's monumental group biography Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (1988). Nonetheless, within this slim volume, Thomson offers a compelling, well-packed narrative. He vividly appraises WB's signature genres, such as the early gangster films and backstage musicals, within a grounded social history of the country and gives meaningful weight to how and why the studio flourished during the Depression and the war years. "Warners was more honest about hard times than any other studio," writes the author. "It was the factory system that defied the slump....As the box office faltered, Warners gave us dames, gunfire, jazzy music, wisecracks, and outrageous, unhindered ids in smart suits, guys who'll go for broke because they know they're doomed." While Thomson provides a lively overview of the brothers' lives, his commentary on the many enduring WB stars, including James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, and Bette Davis, and the back stories behind several classic films such as The Jazz Singer, Public Enemy, and Casablanca, are also noteworthy. An entertaining, well-documented history of the legendary studio for film scholars and fans alike.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.