Book of the week: Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolutionby Brett Martin

Brett Martin’s book opens a “clear and tantalizing” window on an artistic shift that has remade American television.

(Penguin, $28)

Brett Martin’s new book opens a “clear and tantalizing” window on an artistic shift that has remade American television, said Mary McNamara in the Los Angeles Times. Focusing on the “difficult men” who so often have been cast as the creative forces behind the most acclaimed series of our time, the GQ correspondent treats The Sopranos’ David Chase, Mad Men’s Matt Weiner, and a handful of peers “with the sort of bad-boy admiration most usually associated with profiles of Jack Nicholson or books about John Huston.” Martin’s triumph-of-the-mavericks storytelling sometimes glosses over the complications of how great television is truly made. But it turns a real cultural revolution into compelling reading. “As with any cultural shift, the chronicle must begin somewhere.”

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