Brett Martin is a longtime correspondent for GQ and a three-time James Beard Foundation Journalism Award winner. His work has appeared in Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, on This American Life, and in multiple anthologies. He lives with his family in New Orleans.
“Following what the journalist Brett Martin identifies as a first
burst of literary energy in the 1950s (when the medium was young)
and a second in the 1980s (when the forward-thinking television
executive Grant Tinker’s MGM Enterprises begat the groundbreaking
Hill Street Blues), this moment of ascendancy has become
television’s ‘Third Golden Age.’ And in Difficult Men, Martin maps
a wonderfully smart, lively, and culturally astute survey of this
recent revelation— starting with a great title that does double
duty . . . Martin writes with a psychological insight that enhances
his nimble reporting.” —Lisa Schwartzbaum, The New York Times Book
Review
“Martin is a thorough reporter and artful storyteller, clearly
entranced with, though not deluded by, his subjects . . . In
between the delicious bits of insider trading, the book makes a
strong argument for the creative process.” —Los Angeles Times
“[A] smart, fascinating read on the serpentine histories of some of
this generation’s most celebrated TV dramas.” —San Francisco
Chronicle
“Martin offers sharp analysis of the advances in technology and
storytelling that helped TV become the twenty-first century’s
predominant art form. But his best material comes from interviews
with writers, directors, and others who dish about Weiner’s
egomania, Milch’s battles with substance abuse, and Chase’s
weirdest acid trip ever.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Keenly observed offers readers a rare glimpse inside the writers’
rooms.” —Salon
“I read Difficult Men with the bingelike intensity of discovering
Deadwood on DVD—in three days, to the neglect of other
responsibilities . . . I’ve been waiting for years for someone to
write an Easy Riders, Raging Bulls for the HBO era . . . Martin
does all that, with dry wit and a flair for juicy detail . . . An
authoritative and downright riveting account of the stories behind
these shows.” —The Huffington Post
“Enjoyable, wildly readable.” —The Boston Globe
“Martin operates with an enviable fearlessness, painting
warts-and-all portraits of autocratic showrunners such as David
Milch (Deadwood), David Simon (The Wire), and Matthew Weiner (Mad
Men) . . . Anyone interested in television should read this book,
no matter how much or how little they know about the shows it
chronicles.” —Newsday
“Martin’s analysis is intelligent and his culture commentary will
be of interest to fans of many of today’s better-written shows.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“Difficult Men, with its vigorous reporting and keen analysis, is
one of those books that crystallizes a cultural moment and lets you
savor it all the more.” —The Dallas Morning News
“A vastly entertaining and insightful look at the creators of some
of the most highly esteemed recent television series . . . Martin’s
stated goal is to recount the culmination of what he calls the
‘Third Golden Age of Television.’ And he does so with his own
sophisticated synthesis or reporting, on-set observations, and
critical thinking, proving himself as capable of passing judgment,
of parsing strengths and weaknesses of any given TV show, as any
reviewer who covers the beat . . . in short, the sort of criticism
that must now extend to television as much as it does to any other
first-rate art.” —Ken Tucker, Bookforum
“[Showrunners are] as complex and fascinating in Martin’s account
as their anti-hero protagonists are on the screen . . . Breaking
Bad, The Shield, and Six Feet Under have dominated the recent
cultural conversation in the way that movies did in the 1970s . . .
Martin thrillingly explains how and why that conversation migrated
to the erstwhile ‘idiot box.’ A lucid and entertaining analysis of
contemporary quality TV, highly recommended to anyone who turns on
the box to be challenged and engaged.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred
review)
“Martin deftly traces TV’s evolution from an elitist technology in
a handful of homes to an entertainment wasteland reflecting viewers’
anomie to ‘the signature American art form of the first decade of
the twenty-first century.’” —Publishers Weekly
“Masterful . . . Unveils the mysterious-to-all-but-insiders process
that takes place in the rooms where TV shows are written.” —The New
Orleans Times-Picayune
“Difficult Men delivers what it promises. Martin had good access to
actors, writers, and producers . . . Difficult Men is an
entertaining, well-written peek at the creative process.” —Fort
Worth Star-Telegram
“Brett Martin lays out the whole story of TV’s new Golden
Age—lucidly and backed by awesome reporting (and TV watching) . . .
Difficult Men delivers the inside story of the creation of these
landmark TV shows, along with Martin’s astute take on how these
series fit into the larger pop cultural landscape of the early
twenty-first century . . . It should be among the most talked-about
nonfiction titles of the summer.” —CTNews.com
“Entertaining, colorful, and full of sharp anecdotes and insights.”
—The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
“This book taught me a thing or two about how a few weird
executives enabled a handful of weirder writers to make shows I
still can’t believe were on TV. But what I found more
interesting—and disturbing—is how it helped me understand why an
otherwise lily-livered, civic-minded nice girl like me wants to
curl up with a bunch of commandment-breaking,
Constitution-trampling psychos—and that’s just the cops.” —Sarah
Vowell, New York Times bestselling author of Unfamiliar Fishes, The
Wordy Shipmates, and Assassination Vacation
“Aptly titled, and written with verve, humor, and constant energy,
Difficult Men is as gripping as an episode of The Sopranos or
Homeland. Any addict of the new ‘golden’ television (or extended
narratives on premium cable) will love this book. Along the way, it
is also one of the smartest books about American television ever
written. So don’t be surprised if that great creator, David Chase
(of The Sopranos), comes out as a mix of Rodney Dangerfield and
Hamlet.” —David Thompson, author of The Big Screen and The New
Biographical Dictionary of Film
“Brett Martin has accomplished something extraordinary: he has
corralled a disparate group of flawed creative geniuses, extracted
their tales of struggle and triumph, and melded those stories into
a seamless narrative that reads like a nonfiction novel. With
characters as rich as these, you can’t help but reach the obvious
conclusion—Difficult Men would itself make one heck of a TV
series.” —Mark Adams, New York Times bestselling author of Turn
Left at Machu Picchu
“The new golden age of television drama—addictive, dark,
suspenseful, complex, morally murky—finally gets the insanely
readable chronicle it deserves in Brett Martin’s Difficult Men.
This group portrait of the guys who made The Sopranos, Six Feet
Under, The Wire, Deadwood, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad is a deeply
reported, tough-minded, revelatory account of what goes on not just
in the writers’ room but in the writer’s head—the thousand
decisions fueled by genius, ego, instinct, and anger that lead to
the making of a great TV show. Here, at last, is the real story,
and it’s a lot more exciting than the version that gets told in
Emmy acceptance speeches.” —Mark Harris, New York Times bestselling
author of Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of
the New Hollywood
“Sometime in the recent past the conversation changed. My friends
were no longer talking about what movie they’d been to see, but
what television show was their latest obsession. Brett Martin’s
smart and entertaining book illuminates why and how this
happened—while treating fans to the inside scoop on the brilliant
head cases who transformed a low-brow medium into a purveyor of
art.” —Julie Salamon, New York Times bestselling author of The
Devil’s Candy and Wendy and the Lost Boys
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