Oscar Wars

I've been a dedicated Oscar-watcher for ages, and have seen all but less than a handful of the movies that have ever won Best Picture. So this book, which looks at the history of the Academy Awards since their inception nearly 100 years ago to now, is very much up my alley! It focuses on a few storylines per decade that exemplify trends in the movie industry at large, touching on everything from the tempestuous relationship between Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine, to the Blacklist, to the fraught history of race in Hollywood, to the Harvey Weinstein of it all and everything in between. I found it a really enjoyable read, with stories both familiar to me as a longtime listener to You Must Remember This and ones that were entirely new to me. One theme that resonated with me in particular throughout was no matter how much people today carp about the Oscars having become “too political”, they literally have always been political. The Academy itself was founded to establish relationships between different groups in Hollywood (actors, producers, writers, etc) in an attempt to avoid labor issues. You don't have to have a super-deep understanding of film culture coming into this book, so it's accessible for casual movie-watchers who want to learn more as well as entertaining for people who love this stuff already!