Yes! MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, the book by Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and yours truly, hit the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list (online last week, in print next week). After all our hard work, I couldn’t be happier that so many people are reading and enjoying it—and it was an unalloyed delight to meet so many of you during our book tour the last couple of weeks.

If you’re interested in buying a copy for yourself or a loved one, your local bookstore should have it—or if you prefer online shopping, our publishers have set up a page with many links to various retailers.

Perhaps you would prefer to read an excerpt or three before you buy your copy? We can help you.

Rolling Stone hosted a long excerpt about the origins of Marvel Studios at a Mar-a-Lago lunch.

Vanity Fair reprinted a chapter about how Marvel cast its movies and the measures taken by its stars to make their bodies superheroic.

Time excerpted the story of Marvel Studios’ first feature film, Iron Man, and the freewheeling collaboration of Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr.

And TVLine offered a taste of the book with a reprint of the section on the ill-fated Inhumans series.

(You may have paywall issues with Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair; my apologies if that’s the case.)

posted 30 October 2023 in News. no comments yet

Why are you reading this blog entry when you could be buying and/or reading MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios? The book by Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and your self-aggrandizing author is available now at all the places you like to buy books. (Bookstores, mostly.) If you’re interested even somewhat in the Marvel superhero movies and are curious about how they came into existence, we are here for you.

Lots of MCU media to catch up on soon, but I’ll give you two big items for now:

Rolling Stone ran an excerpt of an early chapter, about the creation of Marvel Studios—at a lunch at Mar-a-Lago. (There’s a paywall, sorry.) “The relationship between Arad and Maisel started tense and quickly got worse, stopping just short of a duel with sai blades in the parking lot.”

The New York Times ran a review of the book this morning, and they liked it! “The book’s admiration for Marvel movies works in its favor, freeing the writers to skip straight to the gossip, like the relative who pulls you aside at Thanksgiving to whisper about your cousin’s divorce.”

You can find lots of links to big online bookstores and your local indie (if you click on “Bookstore”) here. Enjoy!

posted 10 October 2023 in Buy My Stuff. no comments yet

MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios comes out tomorrow.

A starred review from Library Journal: “Marvel fans and film aficionados alike will appreciate this highly recommended, smashing insider look at one of entertainment’s greatest success stories.”

And a few interviews with the authors (Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and me, in various combinations):

A printed Q&A with Publishers Weekly.

A virtual book-tour launch at the Book Loft of Columbus, OH.

A conversation with the Agents of Fandom (available via your fave podcast purveyor or on video).

(We’ve done many many more–don’t be surprised if we pop up unexpectedly in your podcast feed this week.)

You can order the book at various purveyors (many links here) or you can start lining up outside your favorite bookstore now to make sure you get your copy first thing tomorrow!

posted 9 October 2023 in Buy My Stuff. no comments yet

One week from today, the book MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios will be on sale in a bookstore near you. It’s the story of Marvel taking over Hollywood—and then finding that its domination was more precarious than expected. It’s got over 100 original interviews with the people who made the movies, from studio head Kevin Feige to the man who played Doctor Strange’s cape. It has stories about purple pens, vision quests in the desert, and polka dot horses. It was a collaboration between Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and yours truly, and if you’re interested in the book, I’d love it if you preordered it today.

This is the official page for the book at W. W. Norton, which includes links to the bookstore of your choice.

This page has the most up-to-date information on the MCU book tour.

An excerpt from the book ran last week in Vanity Fair.

Joanna, Dave, and I did an early interview with SlashFilm.

The first review was a starred notice in Publishers Weekly: “This definitive account of the Hollywood juggernaut thrills.”

In addition, we’ve received some early blog reviews.

Agents of Fandom: “Not to skip to the post-credits scene, but the book is necessary reading for anyone who fancies themselves an MCU fan.”

The Cosmic Circus: “It is an absolute treasure trove of behind-the-scenes surprises, even for the most up-to-date MCU fans.”

PopMatters: “MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios is a highly entertaining, well-researched, wide-ranging, detailed, and objective examination of one of the greatest Hollywood success stories.”

More reviews coming soon, but until then, judge for yourself! Order MCU today!

posted 3 October 2023 in Buy My Stuff, Reviews. no comments yet

I recently had my first byline in The Wall Street Journal: a review of Brothers and Sisters: The Allman Brothers Band and the Inside Story of the Album That Defined the ’70s by Alan Paul. Which I enjoyed, even though I don’t think the album lives up to the subtitle. If you want to read the past the Bill Graham quote that opens the review — “Anyone can boil a potato, but not everyone can make gravy” — then you’ll need a WSJ subscription. (They do offer discounted introductory rates.) If you would like to read a crazy-long feature about the Allman Brothers I wrote for Rolling Stone back in 1999 — it launched my career at the magazine and resulted in a friendly email from Cameron Crowe — then you can click here. Either way, turn up “Whipping Post”!

posted 2 October 2023 in Articles. no comments yet

Team MCU is hitting the road! Some events are already sold out, but we’d love to see as many of you as possible….

posted 27 September 2023 in Buy My Stuff. no comments yet

I have a new book coming out! It’s a history of Marvel Studios and how it remade Hollywood in its own image. We conducted over a hundred interviews for the book and it’s full of juicy behind-the-scenes details you’ve never heard, even if you’re a huge fan of the MCU (polka-dot horses! purple pens! dogs tumbling out of airplanes!).

I wrote this book in a team-up with the extraordinary Joanna Robinson and Dave Gonzales, who are both wicked smart and amazing collaborators. (You might know them from their superstar podcasting work on The Ringer-Verse and Trial by Content.) MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios is being published by the Liveright imprint of W. W. Norton and it’s in United States bookstores on October 10th. How do you preorder a copy? Call up your local indie bookstore or click onto your favorite internet retailer (available via this page).

I think you’ll love the book, but admittedly, I’m not a disinterested party, so perhaps you’d like to check out our first review, from the good people at Publishers Weekly? They call it “a superb chronicle of how Marvel Studios conquered Hollywood.” The starred review concludes: “This definitive account of the Hollywood juggernaut thrills.”

Excelsior!

posted 13 August 2023 in Buy My Stuff. no comments yet

In the spirit of being thorough if somewhat tardy: a few months back, the legendary guitarist (and songwriter and singer and poet and producer) Tom Verlaine died, and I wrote (with Peter Keepnews) an obituary of the Television leader for The New York Times. Various peers and collaborators, including Lenny Kaye, Richard Lloyd, and Richard Hell, were kind enough to offer memories of the man. Read it here and turn up “Marquee Moon” real loud.

posted 16 April 2023 in Articles, Outside. no comments yet

Recently, while writing a newspaper article, I learned that (a) I needed to know the middle name of the singer Al Green (b) there is some disagreement on how he spells it.

He was born Albert Greene on April 13, 1946 (he dropped the final E from his last name shortly after he began his professional singing career). But his middle name is rendered as “Leornes” by some sources (including Wikipedia) and “Leorns” by others (most notably Jimmy McDonough’s definitive 2017 book Soul Survivor: A Biography of Al Green). Contacted through his PR representative, the Reverend Green declined to clear the matter up.

Wikipedia didn’t have any backup for “Leornes” (and I worry that the name has got caught in a citation loop, where the Wikipedia page refers to other sources that in turn draw on the Wikipedia page). But I corresponded with Mr. McDonough, who kindly shared some of his source material, which proved to be court documents, all of which consistently spelled the name “Leorns.” With his permission, I’m sharing them here:

Unless somebody comes up with superior evidence to the contrary, I’m going with “Leorns.”

posted 8 January 2023 in Outside. no comments yet

Happy new year! In case you missed it in 2022: I had two articles in the “Overlooked” section of The New York Times (aka “Overlooked No More”), which profiles remarkable people who never got proper obituaries in the Times, due to the cultural biases of past decades.

The first article was on Vera Menchik, the world’s first women’s chess champion (her reign lasted from 1927 to 1944). I regretted that I didn’t have space to include information on a couple of her contemporaries, including her husband’s Rufus Stevenson’s first wife, Agnes Lawson Stevenson, a top-notch player who died when she walked into an airplane’s whirling propeller. And Menchik’s last major tournament, at the Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires in 1939, pitted her in an epic match against Sonja Graf, an equally fascinating figure.

Graf had left for Buenos Aires as part of the German team but was removed from it en route by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda. Unwilling to recant her public anti-Nazi statements, Graf played the tournament under “the international flag of Liberty.” After finishing second (losing a very close match to Menchik), she stayed in Argentina rather than return to Nazi Germany.

The second article was on Dorothy Spencer, a deft film editor who cut over 70 Hollywood movies across five decades. I wasn’t able to see all of them, but I particularly recommend Stagecoach and To Be or Not to Be (the Ernest Lubitsch version, not the Mel Brooks remake). I was particularly proud that I was able to track down a couple of editors who had knew her professionally at Universal Pictures (her last movie was the otherwise forgettable The Concorde… Airport ’79 in, yes, 1979).

May their lives be an inspiration in 2023, and beyond.

posted 5 January 2023 in Archives. no comments yet