Sexplosion
by Robert Hofler (It Books, $28)
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Roadshow!
by Matthew Kennedy (Oxford, $35)
Matthew Kennedy’s “zesty, detailed” investigation into the decline of the movie musical suggests that rebel culture wasn’t to blame, said Ethan Mordden in The Wall Street Journal. After The Sound of Music’s smash 1965 run, studios bet heavily on musical spectaculars, but lost sight of what worked. Roadshow! contends that hubris sank the art form, and “no title better proves Kennedy’s theory” than 1969’s Paint Your Wagon, a big-budget Western that asked Clint Eastwood to sing.
Wooden
by Seth Davis (Times Books, $35)
Seth Davis’s biography of ex-UCLA basketball coach John Wooden offers a clear-eyed look at “a flawed but extraordinary man,” said Shawna Seed in The Dallas Morning News. The Wizard of Westwood remains arguably the best college hoops coach of all time, having led UCLA to 10 NCAA championships and an unmatched 88-game winning streak. Yet Wooden in his actions occasionally “fell short of the ideals he championed,” and Davis’s portrait shows the man in full.
Tomorrow-land
by Joseph Tirella (Lyons Press, $27)
This account of the 1964 World’s Fair “captures an exciting time from many different angles,” said Sarah Rothbard in Slate.com. Journalist Joseph Tirella uses the event as a lens on the era, when an Andy Warhol mural could stir outrage in New York and Robert Moses was pursuing his grand plans for reshaping the city. While the story will feel “mostly familiar,” Tirella’s account deftly captures the tension between the fair’s lofty visions of the future and the rising tensions of the day.