In a career spanning more than thirty years, Letterman redefined the modern talk show with an ironic comic style that transcended traditional television. Yet he is a remote, even reclusive, figure whose career is widely misunderstood. Zinoman goes behind the scenes of Letterman's television career to illuminate the origins of his revolutionary comedy, its overlooked influences, and how his work intersects with and reveals his famously eccentric personality....

In 1968 a young college drop-out named George A. Romero directed Night of the living dead, a low budget horror film that shocked the world, became an icon of the counterculture, and spawned a zombie industry worth billions of dollars that continues to this day. Birth of the living dead shows how Romero gathered an unlikely team of Pittsburghers - policemen, iron workers, teachers, ad-men, housewives and a roller-rink owner - to shoot a revolutionary...