Cockpit Confessions of an Airline Pilot by Steve Keshner is a fantastic book about the day to day life of a pilot - not for a big commercial airline, but the proverbial “cargo plane full of rubber dog shit.” The author flew for several different airlines, most of them obscure.
If this book is to be believed, pilots are some of the raunchiest, most promiscuous, dirty-minded men on earth. There is a lot of dirty, dirty talk in this book. Not for the faint of heart. It’s also very poorly edited. But it’s hilarious, and comes from the heart.
Sesame Street: Unpaved is awesome and I second the recommendation, but also check out Street Gang, a newer book that focuses mostly on the development of Sesame Street. It’s great!
The Devil’s Candy by Julie Salomon is an extremely well-researched book about the disastrous filming of Bonfire of the Vanities. I’ve read a few Hollywood behind-the-scenes books, and this one is significantly better than the others. It’s far more concerned with analysing and documenting exactly how it all went so wrong rather than just relying on lots of salacious gossip.
I forget the author and title, but there’s another pretty good book about the fight between Paramount/Eddie Murphy and Art Buchwald over the genesis of the film *Coming to America. *Buchwald wins, but ultimately, the battle was important because it revealed once and for all the sleazy accounting that Hollywood had used for decades to hide profits.
Bruce was the first famous person who got to meet our new baby - she was about 3-4 weeks old when the book-signing occurred, so the signature is made out to her.
She may not be the most reliable narrator, but it’s as much a “This is how Hollywood screws woman producers” expose as it is a “This is how my life fell to pieces” memoir.
And we can’t forget the classic Daddy’s Boy by Chris Elliott. I’ve switched to Gold Toe socks because of this book, which is probably more than you want to know, but still…
I have lost all faith in my school’s library. They have literally none of these books on hand…I have to interlibrary loan them all. Which takes FOREVER…
I second the recommendations for The Final Cut and The Devil’s Candy.
Music:“Dreaming Out Loud” by Bruce Feiler tracks three hot new country music acts in the 90s to show how the country music industry totally changed both its sound and way of doing things. Even if you don’t like this music it’s a great read.
Movies:“Hit and Run”, Griffin and Masters. See how two sleazy operators somehow were given control of Columbia Pictures, and how they ran through billions while enriching themselves. In a similar mode read “Fade Out” by Peter Bart on the fall of MGM Pictures.
Sports:“The $1 League” (on the USFL) and “Thin Ice” by Larry Sloman (on the 1980 NY Rangers) are hard to find but worth the look. In Sloman’s book you’ll be amazed to find out what the atheletes are willing to admit to the author.
Hit Men, about the men behind the growth of hit singles in the late 50’s and early 60’s and 70’s - from the Brill building pop hits through the big record labels and all the cocaine and flash
Mansion on the Hill, about the emergence of rock as a corporate business, with the management and careers of Dylan, Springsteen, Jackson Browne used to show all the back-room maneuvering…
The Year of the King by Antony Sher, about playing Richard III for the RSC in Stratford in (I think) 1981. Lots of stuff about the professional and social workings of the RSC at that time.
Old stuff, but Mort Walker’s Backstage at the Strips shows you behind the scenes at the comic strips
Even older, Steven Whitfield;'s The Making of Star Trek came out while the series was still airing – the first such book about a TV show I’m aware of, and cwas reprinted many times
So has Jerome Agel’s The Making of Kubrick’s 2001:
which should be read side-by-side with Arthur C. Clarke’s The Lost Worlds of 2001:
I just watched a great documentary called Waking Sleeping Beauty, which isn’t a book so is outside the OP’s purview, but it was still a fascinating look at Disney Animation’s renaissance in the 1990s.
