Book Review: The Twilight Man

We recognize Rod Serling as our sharply dressed, cigarette-smoking tour guide of The Twilight Zone, but the entertainment business once regarded him as the "Angry Young Man" of Television. Before he became the revered master of science fiction, Rod Serling was a just a writer who had to fight to make his voice heard. He vehemently challenged the networks and viewership alike to expand their minds and standards—rejecting notions of censorship, racism and war. But it wasn’t until he began to write about real world enemies in the guise of aliens and monsters that people lent their ears. In doing so, he pushed the television industry to the edge of glory, and himself to the edge of sanity. Rod operated in a dimension beyond that of contemporary society, making him both a revolutionary and an outsider.

Book Review: All Tomorrow's Parties

Many cultural critics would agree that Andy Warhol gave the Velvet Underground their break simply by bringing them under his wing. While they reached a certain level of notoriety and local celebrity in their time and have since acquired a lasting cult following, their success was in large part fostered by Warhol’s patronage. But at the time, this relationship was muddied by a certain level of codependence and an insatiable appetite for fame and irony, leaving Lou Reed to ponder quietly: Would we have succeeded without Warhol's help? This doubt begins to spread like a malignant force, eventually leading to the band’s undoing as they break away from Warhol and, perhaps, give up their golden ticket to success.