Pandora’s Box

Peter Biskind's Pandora's Box is not only a richly detailed and colorful account of how TV has defiantly superseded the cinema in the last thirty years, but also an important historic document.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

Brian Cox

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

Lena Dunham

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

Steven Soderbergh

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

Fall 2023 Must-Reads, Entertainment Weekly

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

Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

Biskind is known as much for his outspoken opinions as his insightful commentary, and Pandora’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

Booklist

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

New Yorker

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, neuroses and episodes of appalling behaviour

Financial Times

A binge-worthy book

Economist

Thoroughly entertaining… Pandora’s Box is essential viewing

Rebecca Nicholson, Guardian

- - Praise for Peter Biskind

Who else can explicate the hidden politics of movies and make you laugh out loud at the same time?

Barbara Ehrenreich on The Sky is Falling

Insanely readable

Slavoj Zizek on The Sky is Falling

You'll never look at your favourite movies and TV shows the same way again. And you shouldn't

Steven Soderbergh on The Sky is Falling

Thoughtful, entertaining and occasionally profound

Spectator on The Sky is Falling

Spot on

Irish Times on The Sky is Falling

Dishy, teeming, superbly reported...packed with lively inside anecdotes...[a] juicy and fascinating exposé

Entertainment Weekly on Down and Dirty Pictures

Sensationally entertaining

Los Angeles Times on Down and Dirty Pictures

Peter Biskind's great, scathing, news-packed history...is one hell of an elixir-salty with flavorsome gossip, sour with the aftertaste of misspent careers, intoxicating with one revelation after another...an A

Entertainment Weekly on Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

Biskind's devourable book is that rarity, a Hollywood exposé that you can read mouth agape, slurping up scandal and titillation so fast you're in danger of choking-without feeling ashamed of yourself

Washington Post Book World on Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

Biskind is a magician at prying revealing yarns and juicy quotes out of his subjects. And the resulting scenarios are deliciously tawdry...moments of real intelligence and grace

San Francisco Chronicle on Easy Riders, Raging Bulls