Tom Bissell

Greg Sestero

This side-splittingly funny ode to cinematic hubris tells the story of the mysteriously wealthy misfit and producer, director and star of The Room, an international phenomenon to rival The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made

The Disaster Artist

A personal assessment of the author's addiction to video games explores his favorites, their roles as modern forms of popular art, and their habit-forming appeal while considering how he has neglected his professional and social responsibilities in favorof gaming activities.

Why Video Games Matter

Extra Lives

Now a major motion picture, The Disaster Artist, starring James Franco, Alison Brie, Zoey Deutch, Lizzy Caplan, Zac Efron, Bryan Cranston, Dave Franco, Kristen Bell, Seth Rogen, Sharon Stone, and Judd Apatow. In 2003, an independent film called The Room - starring and written, produced, and directed by a mysteriously wealthy social misfit named Tommy Wiseau - made its disastrous debut in Los Angeles. Described by one reviewer as 'like getting stabbed in the head', the $6 million film earned a grand total of $1,800 at the box office and closed after two weeks. Over a decade later, The Room is an international cult phenomenon, whose legions of fans attend screenings featuring costumes, audience rituals, merchandising and thousands of plastic spoons. In The Disaster Artist, Greg Sestero, Tommy's costar, recounts the film's bizarre journey to infamy, explaining how the movie's many nonsensical scenes and bits of dialogue came to be and unraveling the mystery of Tommy Wiseau himself. But more than just a riotously funny story about cinematic hubris, The Disaster Artist is an honest and warm testament to friendship.

From the set of The Big Bang Theory to the first novel of Ernest Hemingway to the film documentaries of Werner Herzog, the author explores the creative process in a series of essays.

Essays on Creators and Creation

Magic Hours

why video games matter

Extra lives

From the best-selling coauthor of The Disaster Artist, a new collection of stories that range from laugh-out-loud funny to disturbingly dark--unflinching portraits of women and men struggling to bridge the gap between art and life A young and ingratiating assistant to a movie star makes a blunder that puts his boss and a major studio at grave risk. A long-married couple hires an escort for a threesome in order to rejuvenate their relationship. An assistant at a prestigious literary journal reconnects with a middle school frenemy and finds that his carefully constructed world of refinement cannot protect him from his past. A Bush administration lawyer wakes up on an abandoned airplane, trapped in a nightmare of his own making. In these and other stories, Tom Bissell vividly renders the complex worlds of characters on the brink of artistic and personal crises--writers, video-game developers, actors, and other creative types who see things slightly differently from the rest of us. With its surreal, poignant, and sometimes squirm-inducing stories, Creative Types is a brilliant new offering from one the most versatile and talented writers working in America today.

And Other Stories

Creative Types

From the best-selling coauthor of The Disaster Artist, a new collection of stories that range from laugh-out-loud funny to disturbingly dark—unflinching portraits of women and men struggling to bridge the gap between art and life A young and ingratiating assistant to a movie star makes a blunder that puts his boss and a major studio at grave risk. A long-married couple hires an escort for a threesome in order to rejuvenate their relationship. An assistant at a prestigious literary journal reconnects with a middle school frenemy and finds that his carefully constructed world of refinement cannot protect him from his past. A Bush administration lawyer wakes up on an abandoned airplane, trapped in a nightmare of his own making. In these and other stories, Tom Bissell vividly renders the complex worlds of characters on the brink of artistic and personal crises—writers, video-game developers, actors, and other creative types who see things slightly differently from the rest of us. With its surreal, poignant, and sometimes squirm-inducing stories, Creative Types is a brilliant new offering from one the most versatile and talented writers working in America today.

and Other Stories

A profound and moving journey into the heart of Christianity that explores the mysterious and often paradoxical lives and legacies of the Twelve Apostles—a book both for those of the faith and for others who seek to understand Christianity from the outside in. “Expertly researched and fascinating… Bissell is a wonderfully sure guide to these mysterious men.… This is a serious book about the origins of Christianity that is also very funny. How often can you say that?” —The Independent Peter, Matthew, Thomas, John: Who were these men? What was their relationship to Jesus? Tom Bissell provides rich and surprising answers to these ancient, elusive questions. He examines not just who these men were (and weren’t), but also how their identities have taken shape over the course of two millennia. Ultimately, Bissell finds that the story of the apostles is the story of early Christianity: its competing versions of Jesus’s ministry, its countless schisms, and its ultimate evolution from an obscure Jewish sect to the global faith we know today in all its forms and permutations. In his quest to understand the underpinnings of the world’s largest religion, Bissell embarks on a years-long pilgrimage to the supposed tombs of the Twelve Apostles. He travels from Jerusalem and Rome to Turkey, Greece, Spain, France, India, and Kyrgyzstan, vividly capturing the rich diversity of Christianity’s worldwide reach. Along the way, he engages with a host of characters—priests, paupers, a Vatican archaeologist, a Palestinian taxi driver, a Russian monk—posing sharp questions that range from the religious to the philosophical to the political. Written with warmth, empathy, and rare acumen, Apostle is a brilliant synthesis of travel writing, biblical history, and a deep, lifelong relationship with Christianity. The result is an unusual, erudite, and at times hilarious book—a religious, intellectual, and personal adventure fit for believers, scholars, and wanderers alike.

Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve

Apostle

Tom Bissell is a prizewinning writer who published three widely acclaimed books before the age of thirty-four. He is also an obsessive gamer who has spent untold hours in front of his various video game consoles, playing titles such as Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, BioShock, and Oblivion for, literally, days. If you are reading this flap copy, the same thing can probably be said of you, or of someone you know. Until recently, Bissell was somewhat reluctant to admit to his passion for games. In this, he is not alone. Millions of adults spend hours every week playing video games, and the industry itself now reliably outearns Hollywood. But the wider culture seems to regard video games as, at best, well designed if mindless entertainment. Extra Lives is an impassioned defense of this assailed and misunderstood art form. Bissell argues that we are in a golden age of gaming—but he also believes games could be even better. He offers a fascinating and often hilarious critique of the ways video games dazzle and, just as often, frustrate. Along the way, we get firsthand portraits of some of the best minds (Jonathan Blow, Clint Hocking, Cliff Bleszinski, Peter Molyneux) at work in video game design today, as well as a shattering and deeply moving final chapter that describes, in searing detail, Bissell’s descent into the world of Grand Theft Auto IV, a game whose themes mirror his own increasingly self-destructive compulsions. Blending memoir, criticism, and first-rate reportage, Extra Lives is like no other book on the subject ever published. Whether you love video games, loathe video games, or are merely curious about why they are becoming the dominant popular art form of our time, Extra Lives is required reading.

Stephen King

Michael Lewis

Bev Vincent

Dan Simmons

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Ambrose Bierce

Richard Matheson

Cody Goodfellow

E. c. Tubb

Flight Or Fright ANZ SA and Ireland Only

"Bissell finds that the story of the apostles is the story of early Christianity: its competing versions of Jesus's ministry, its countless schisms, and its ultimate evolution from an obscure Jewish sect to the global faith we know today in all its forms and permutations. In his quest to understand the underpinnings of the world's largest religion, Bissell embarks on a years-long pilgrimage to the supposed tombs of the Twelve Apostles"--Dust jacket flap.

Apostle, Or, Bones that Shine Like Fire

The author of fiction and journalism chronicles his harrowing journey into Uzbekistan to investigate the ecological disaster of the Aral Sea, capturing all the pathos and contradictions witnessed by an American adrift in a foreign land. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia

Chasing the Sea

Jeff Alexander

Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn's commentary on "The Fellowship of the Ring," Dinesh D'Souza and Ann Coulter's commentary on "Aliens," Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson'S commentary on "Planet of the Apes," and Dick Cheney and William Bennett's detailed analysis of "Star Wars: Episode I."

Speak, Commentary

In 1996, Tom Bissell went to Uzbekistan as a na•ve Peace Corps volunteer. Though he lasted only a few months before illness and personal crisis forced him home, Bissell found himself entranced by this remote land. Five years later he returned to explore the shrinking Aral Sea, destroyed by Soviet irrigation policies. Joining up with an exuberant translator named Rustam, Bissell slips more than once through the clutches of the Uzbek police as he makes his often wild way to the devastated sea. In Chasing the Sea, Bissell combines the story of his travels with a beguiling chronicle of Uzbekistan’s striking culture and long history of violent subjugation by despots from Jenghiz Khan to Joseph Stalin. Alternately amusing and sobering, this is a gripping portrait of a fascinating place, and the debut of a singularly gifted young writer.

In Extra Lives, acclaimed writer and life-long video game enthusiast Tom Bissell takes the reader on an insightful and entertaining tour of the art and meaning of video games. In just a few decades, video games have grown increasingly complex and sophisticated, and the companies that produce them are now among the most profitable in the entertainment industry. Yet few outside this world have thought deeply about how these games work, why they are so appealing, and what they are capable of artistically. Blending memoir, criticism, and first-rate reportage, Extra Lives is a milestone work about what might be the dominant popular art form of our time.

Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter

Summary Station

Learn About Tommy Wiseau and The Best Bad Movie Ever Made In A Fraction Of The Time It Takes To Read The Actual Book!!!Today only, get this 1# Amazon bestseller for just $2.99. Regularly priced at $9.99. Read on your PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet or Kindle device The opening chapter of Sestero's book introduces us to Tommy Wiseau, the eccentric filmmaker himself, as he treats his friend, Greg Sestero, to a celebratory dinner at Hollywood's Palm Restaurant. Filming of Wiseau's film, The Room, starts the following day. Sestero explains that Wiseau wrote, directed, produced, cast, and starred in the film—a true passion project. Sestero spends the majority of this chapter detailing Wiseau's all around strangeness. For example, Tommy's hair is long and unkempt, he wears outdated clothes with two (yes, two) belts on his pants, and he drinks glasses of hot water with every meal. Two girls come over to the table, introducing themselves and flirting accordingly, and Wiseau—who speaks in broken English—insults them viciously and hilariously in a French(ish) accent. Wiseau then racks up a huge bill, barely tips the waiter, and storms out of the restaurant in traditional Tommy Wiseau fashion. Wiseau then drives himself and Sestero from the restaurant at a mere twenty miles per hour in his Mercedes. In the car, Tommy makes Greg an interesting offer the day before his film's production; Tommy wants Greg to star in The Room as Mark, a character who betrays Tommy's lead character, Johnny. Here Is A Preview Of What You'll Learn When You Download Your Copy Today• How The Disaster Artist Was Created • The Reason Why Tommy Wiseau Is One Of The Most Unique Directors In The World • Learn How The Disaster Artist Was A Success Even Though It Was Also A Failure Download Your Copy Today! The contents of this book are easily worth over $9.99, but for a limited time you can download “The Disaster Artist" by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell for a special discounted price of only $2.99

My Life Inside the Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made

Summary and Analysis of the Disaster Artist

The Father of All Things is a riveting, haunting, and often hilarious account of a veteran and his son’s journey through Vietnam. As his father recounts his experiences as a soldier, including a near fatal injury, Tom Bissell weaves a larger history of the war and explores the controversies that still spark furious debate today. Blending history, memoir, and travelogue, The Father of All Things is a portrait of the war’s personal, political, and cultural impact from the perspective of the generation that grew up in the wake of the conflict. It is also a wise and revelatory book about the bond between fathers and sons.

Tom Bissell

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