How Vampires, Zombies, Androids and Superheroes Made America Great for Extremism

The Sky is Falling!

The Unexpected Politics of Hollywood’s Superheroes and Zombies

'You'll never look at your favourite movies and TV shows the same way again. And you shouldn't' Steven Soderbergh 
 'Insanely readable' Slavoj Zizek 
'Your book was ... like a bag of pot, with me saying, 'I'm not gonna smoke.' But I was insatiable' Quentin Tarantino on Easy Riders, Raging Bulls 
 
In The Sky is Falling! bestselling cultural critic Peter Biskind takes us on a dizzying ride across two decades of pop culture to show how the TV and movies we love - from Game of Thrones and 24 to Homeland and Iron Man - have taught us to love political extremism. Welcome to a darkly pessimistic, apocalyptic world where winter has come, the dead are walking, and ultra violence, revenge and torture are all in a day's work. Welcome to the new normal.

A Sunday Times Book of the Year

Compulsively readable ... a thoughtful, entertaining and occasionally profound critical study of the texts that entertain, move and, sometimes, shape us

Excellent critical writing ... Biskind's pastiche of right-wing paranoia is spot on

Biskind's wide-ranging arguments offer considerable food for thought

The Sky is Falling! is not only insanely readable, it demonstrates how the way for Trump and all kinds of fundamentalists was paved years ago by apparently apolitical popular culture. This is a book about the seismic change at the very heart of today's society, and a book for all those who want to know exactly what a mess we're in.

Peter Biskind's kaleidoscopic deep dive into the symbiotic relationship between the narratives of popular entertainment and our political culture had me talking out loud to myself. You'll never look at your favorite movies and TV shows the same way again. And you shouldn't.

Funny, intelligent and frightening ... What happens when pop turns to pulp? When "nothing entertains but disaster?" When "democracy has all but dissolved in the acid rain of money?" Read this marvellous book and find the answers

A breathless compendium of storylines and audacious analysis ... touching on worthwhile questions about how film and TV shape our sense of history and how the world works. Pop culture has become pulp culture... which superhero will come to our rescue?

The only thing better than seeing a good movie is reading what Peter Biskind has to say about it. Who else can explicate the hidden politics of movies and make you laugh out loud at the same time?

The great chronicler of Hollywood in the late twentieth century turns his critical eye to the cinema and television of the twenty first. Essential reading

A bold, witty, and brilliantly argued analysis of the role pop culture has played in the rise of American extremism

Your book was . . . like a bag of pot, with me saying, 'I'm not gonna smoke.' But I was insatiable

Quentin Tarantino on EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS

Peter Biskind is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, a writer for Esquire, and the author of the classic bestsellers Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Down and Dirty Pictures. He lives in upstate New York.

Are Batman and 24's Jack Bauer heroic loners defending our way of life - or right-wing vigilantes attacking it? Is Avatar just a National Geographic version of Star Wars or a passionate assault on capitalism? And what about Game of Thrones - sword and sorcery fantasy, or lesson in mainstream politics? 
 
In The Sky is Falling! bestselling cultural critic Peter Biskind takes us on a dizzying ride across two decades of pop culture to show how the TV and movies we love have taught us to love political extremism. Welcome to a darkly pessimistic, apocalyptic world where winter has come, the dead are walking, and ultra violence, revenge and torture are all in a day's work. Welcome to the new normal.

Peter Biskind

Thoroughly entertaining&hellip; Pandora&rsquo;s Box is essential viewing

Biskind is the perfect person to chronicle how we got here &hellip; The writers and showrunners are compelling figures, and Biskind&rsquo;s story is larded with stories of their triumphs, creative crises, neuroses and episodes of appalling behaviour

Pandora&rsquo;s Box explains, in punchy, propulsive prose, how we went from Tony Soprano to Ted Lasso &hellip; Biskind is skilled at the quick character sketch &hellip; [and] lays out a sprawling, amoral ecosystem with the dispassion of an omniscient narrator

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

Peter 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

This 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

Peter 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 War

Peter 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

This gossip-filled overview of the past 40 years of television will keep readers glued to their seats

Biskind is known as much for his outspoken opinions as his insightful commentary, and Pandora&rsquo;s Box is Biskind at his most candid. For readers interested in what goes on behind the scenes in the world of television, a must-read

The Greed, Lust, and Lies That Broke Television

The revolution has been televized. From The Sopranos to Stranger Things, the shows we watch - and the ways we watch them - have been transformed over the past fifty years. Out of the bland wasteland of 'play-it-safe' broadcasting came astonishing stories of sex , violence, and corruption shown first on cable, and then by way of streaming. Today, the power of viewers to select what they want and when they want it is greater than ever before. In short, we are living in a new golden age of television, but golden ages don't last forever, and this one may turn out to be too much of a good thing. Revolutions have a habit of eating their own, and the era of 'peak TV' may have an unhappy ending. 
 
Pandora's Box is a major new account of the small screen from incisive cultural critic Peter Biskind. Through exclusive, candid and colourful interviews with writers, showrunners, directors and actors, Biskind brings us face to face with the people whose creations we encounter every day on our sofas, revealing the dynamic interplay of art, commerce and technology. We follow executives down the corridors of power and see how their money and guile cultivate, then crush creativity; we witness the making - and unmaking - of TVs biggest hits. There has never been a more exciting time in entertainment history, and in Peter Biskind, the ideal insider guide, captures all of it.

Peter Biskind

Praise for Pandora’s Box

A binge-worthy book

**Thoroughly entertaining… Pandora’s Box is essential viewing**

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, neurose ...

A binge-worthy book

**Thoroughly entertaining… Pandora’s Box is essential viewing**

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, neurose ...

A binge-worthy book

**Thoroughly entertaining… Pandora’s Box is essential viewing**

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, neurose ...

Books by Peter Biskind

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter