Pandora’s Box

A binge-worthy book * Economist *Thoroughly entertaining… Pandora’s Box is essential viewing – Rebecca Nicholson * Guardian *Biskind is the perfect person to chronicle how we got here … The writers and showrunners are compelling figures, and Biskind’s story is larded with stories of their triumphs, creative crises, neuroses and episodes of appalling behaviour * Financial Times *Pandora’s Box explains, in punchy, propulsive prose, how we went from Tony Soprano to Ted Lasso … Biskind is skilled at the quick character sketch … [and] lays out a sprawling, amoral ecosystem with the dispassion of an omniscient narrator * New Yorker *Peter Biskind’s Pandora’s Box is not only a richly detailed and colorful account of how TV has defiantly superseded the cinema in the last thirty years, but also an important historic document. Biskind brilliantly maneuvers his way through a panoply of cinematic and television endeavor with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. A gripping and compulsive read – Brian CoxPeter Biskind has always been the most rigorous and amusing Hollywood historian we have, taking on the great men of the past–and now with his trademark cheeky intelligence he takes on the giants of the present age of television-as-cinema. Despite my having lived much of the book’s arc, Biskind offers a fresh perspective on the new Wild West of home entertainment – Lena DunhamThis brisk, blistering overview of how streaming has changed where we put our eyeballs is classic binge-worthy reading. I had no idea the people who created culture-altering shows are as entertaining as the shows themselves, but Peter Biskind did, and you’ll never look at them same way again – Steven SoderberghPeter Biskind takes on a wild, whirlwind tour of the birth, life, death, and rebirth of cable and streaming services, introducing us to the people behind them who turn out to be as ferociously nutty as the characters they put on the screen – David Nasaw, author of The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold WarPeter Biskind catalogs real-life misbehavior by the principals responsible for an array of lauded series with the same unsparing eye that he detailed the excesses of New Hollywood in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls – Fall 2023 Must-Reads * Entertainment Weekly *This gossip-filled overview of the past 40 years of television will keep readers glued to their seats * Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW *

Peter Biskind is a cultural critic and film historian. He was formerly editor-in-chief of American Film magazine and executive editor of Premiere magazine. His writing has appeared in scores of national publications, including The New York Times and Rolling Stone, as well as several film journals. He is currently a contributing editor at American Vanity Fair. He has published eight books, including the bestseller Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, and is Executive Director of the FilmColumbia Festival held in the Hudson Valley.