Joel Engel

This book introduces the men and women responsible for the screenplays that have produced some of the most successful and acclaimed films in Hollywood history.

Screenwriters on Screenwriting

The Star Trek phenomenon has grown since its creation by Gene Roddenberry, into several successful television series, numerous feature films, and a multi-million dollar merchandizing industry, including over 100 novels. This biography of Roddenberry exposes him as a contradictory and obsessive personality.

The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek

Gene Roddenberry

Jim Morris

Presents the inspirational true story of Jim Morris's departure from the minor leagues after a string of injuries, his career as a high school physics teacher, and his eventual return to the minors followed by an all-star career in the majors. 75,000 first printing.

Big-League Dreams from a Small-Town Guy

The Oldest Rookie

John Ratzenberger

The host of the Travel Channel's "John Ratzenberger's Made in America" presents a collection of thought-provoking essays on what makes America the great nation that it is today.

A Common Man's Salute to an Uncommon Country

We've Got it Made in America

Traces the story of a former police officer who was wrongly accused of rape and kidnapping in racially tense 1956 Los Angeles, describing how a Latino detective fell in love with one of the victims and became the defender's only advocate. By the author of By George.

A Devil in the City of Angels

L.A. '56

Before any lights, camera, or action, there's the script -- arguably the most important single element in filmmaking, and Screenwriters on Screen-Writing introduces the men and women responsible for the screenplays that have produced some of the most successful and acclaimed films in Hollywood history. In each interview, not only do the writers explore the craft and technique of creating a filmic blueprint, but they recount the colorful tales of coming up in the ranks of the movie business and of bringing their stories to the screen, in a way that only natural-born storytellers such as themselves can. These and other screenwriters have garnered the attention of the movie-going population not only with their words, but with headlines announcing the sales of their scripts for hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars. Anyone interested in writing, making, or learning about movies will enjoy reading this fascinating behind-the-scenes compendium that brings together some of the most prominent and talented screenwriters in modern-day filmmaking.

The Best in the Business Discuss Their Craft

Screenwriters on Screen-Writing

Ezell Ware

Traces the story of a brigadier-general and Vietnam soldier who endured the Jim Crow attitudes of the segregated South throughout his youth only to find himself struggling for survival at the side of his Ku Klux Klan-member captain, with whom he was downed for three weeks in the Vietnamese jungles. Reprint.

Survival and Redemption in Vietnam

By Duty Bound

George Foreman

Heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman describes his childhood, family, ring failures and successes, and how he reclaimed his title at the age of forty-five through determination and humor. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.

The Autobiography of George Foreman

By George

Jack Youngblood

An onand off-field portrait of the legendary end for the L.A. Rams describes his record-breaking career, his relentless drive to excel; his alcoholism, infidelity, and the marriage destroyed by his excesses, and Youngblood's football philosophies

Blood

This landmark first biography of Rod Serling offers fascinating insights into his life, from the nearly idyllic childhood that he could never recapture to the haunting World War II experiences that informed his imagination and his sudden emergence as one of television's Golden Age luminaries, responsible for shaping the medium itself.Last Stop, The Twilight Zone paints a startling picture of the complex, unhappy man beneath Serling's gregarious yet suave public persona. Despite receiving critical and popular acclaim, Serling was doubtful of his own talent, compulsively accepting nearly any job offered, from writing to pitching products. Prolific by any measure, he felt imprisoned by his most famous creation, The Twilight Zone. Here is the Rod Serling we never knew, the man whose success overshadowed his ambitions and, eventually, his life-a life that ended long before it should have.

Last Stop, the Twilight Zone: A Biography of Rod Serling

To effect just outcomes the justice system requires that law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges be committed—above all—to doing justice. Those whose allegiance is to winning, regardless of evidence, do the opposite of justice: they corrupt the system. This is the jaw-dropping story of one such corruption and its surprise ending. On Labor Day 2007, a forest fire broke out in California’s eastern Sierra Nevada and eventually burned about 65,000 acres. Investigators from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the United States Forest Service took a mere two days to conclude that the liable party was the successful forest-products company Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI), founded as a tiny sawmill nearly sixty years earlier by Red Emmerson. The investigative report on the fire declared that SPI’s independent logging contractor had started the conflagration by driving a bulldozer over a rock, creating a spark that flew into a pile of brush. No fire had ever been proven to start that way, but based on the report the U.S. Department of Justice and California’s attorney general filed nearly identical suits against Emmerson’s company. The amount sought was nearly a billion dollars, enough to bankrupt or severely damage it. Emmerson, of course, fought back. Week by week, month by month, year by year, his lawyers discovered that the investigators had falsified evidence, lied under oath, fabricated science, invented a narrative, and intentionally ignored a mountain of exculpatory evidence. They never pursued a known arsonist who was in the area that day, nor a young man who repeatedly volunteered alibis contradicted by facts. Though the government lawyers had not known at the start that the investigation was tainted, they nonetheless refused to drop the suits as the discovery process continued and dozens of revelations made clear that any verdict against Emmerson’s company would be unjust. Scorched Worth is a riveting tale that dramatizes how fragile and arbitrary justice can be when those empowered to act in the name of the people are more loyal to the bureaucracies that employ them than to the people they’re supposed to serve. It’s also the story of a man who refused to let the government take from him what he’d spent a lifetime earning.

Joel Engel

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