"If you have ever turned on the TV after the 11 o'clock news and laughed, you owe Steve Allen a debt of gratitude." That's how Entertainment Weekly described Steve Allen's enormous contribution to American popular culture in a tribute to the legendary entertainer after his death on October 30, 2000. Steve Allen created the Tonight show - America's longest running entertainment show and most successful late-night TV show. In so doing he led the way for other American icons: Johnny Carson, Jack Paar, David Letterman, and Jay Leno. The formula we all now take for granted did not exist before Allen: the desk, the opening monologue, breezy chats with celebrities, wacky stunts, comedy sketches, cameras roaming down the hall and outside the theater, off-the-cuff interviews with passers-by, and ad-lib banter with the studio audience. It's all great fun and it's all due to the incredibly witty, incurably silly, musically gifted, and ever-likeable Steve Allen. Based on exclusive interviews, Ben Alba has produced this wonderful history of the first Tonight show, complete with terrific photos from the show and revealing insights from over 30 entertainment legends who knew and worked with Steve Allen - including Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Jonathan Winters, Don Knotts, Louis Nye, Tom Poston, Bill Dana, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Andy Williams, Tim Conway, the Smothers Brothers, Diahann Carroll, Eartha Kitt, Bill Dana, and Doc Severinsen. In addition, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Bill Maher, Bob Costas, and other TV veterans reflect on Allen's contributions. Starting with Allen's early career in radio, Alba shows how the young radio talent developed many of the elements that would soon light up late-night television. He then highlights Allen's many innovations that made the Tonight show so appealing and enduring: the single-guest and single theme shows, road shows and live segments from across the country, Broadway shows visiting Tonight, creating a forum for jazz artistry and a groundbreaking showcase for African-American talent, musical tributes, and the use of the studio audience as a comedy goldmine. Alba has created an invaluable, entertaining, and revealing behind-the-scenes look at the birth of an American television institution and its brilliant inventor, whose influence continues to make America stay awake and laugh -night after night.

"Fascinating." —Vanity Fair   "A delightful history." —Wall Street Journal   In 1964, Chrysler gave the world a glimpse of the future. The automaker built a fleet of turbine cars—automobiles with jet engines—and lent them out to members of the public. The fleet logged over a million miles; the exercise was a raging success.  These turbine engines would run on any flammable liquid—diesel, heating oil, kerosene, tequila, even Chanel No. 5. If the cars had been mass produced, today we might have cars that do not require petroleum-derived fuels. The engine was also much simpler than the piston engine—it contained far fewer moving parts and required much less maintenance. The cars had no radiators or fan belts and never needed oil changes. Yet Chrysler crushed and burned most of the cars two years later; the jet car’s brief glory was over. Where did it all go wrong? Steve Lehto has interviewed all the surviving members of the turbine car program, from the metallurgist who created the exotic metals for the interior of the engine to the test driver who drove it at Chrysler’s proving grounds for days on end. Lehto takes these firsthand accounts and weaves them into a fascinating story about the coolest car Detroit has ever produced.

Animated version of the 2003 film 'Elf' and the Broadway production 'Elf - The Musical', featuring the voices of Jim Parsons and Mark Hamill. Buddy (Parsons) has been raised by Santa (Edward Asner), living and working among the elves at the North Pole. When Santa tells him he is actually a human being and his real father, Walter Hobbs (Hamill), resides in New York Buddy goes on a journey to the Big Apple. He begins to adapt to the unfamiliar surroundings and gets to know his family and new friend Jovie (Kate Micucci), though Walter is not immediately taken with his son. When, on Christmas Eve, Santa encounters problems with his sleigh it is down to Buddy to save the day with his endless holiday cheer.

A 2017 Michigan Notable Book After World War II, the American automobile industry was reeling. Having spent years building tanks and airplanes for the army, the car companies would need years more to retool their production to meet the demands of the American public, for whom they had not made any cars since 1942.    And then in stepped Preston Tucker. This salesman extraordinaire from Ypsilanti, Michigan, had built race cars before the war, and had designed prototypes for the military during it. Now, gathering a group of brilliant automotive designers, engineers, and promoters, he announced the creation of a revolutionary new car: the Tucker '48, the first car in almost a decade to be built fresh from the ground up. Tucker's car would include ingenious advances in design and engineering that other car companies could not match. With a rear engine, rear-wheel drive, a safety-glass windshielf that would pop out in case of an accident, a padded dashboard, independent suspension, and automatic transmission, it would be more attractive and aerodynamic—and safer—than any other car on the road.    But as the public eagerly awaited Tucker's car of tomorrow, powerful forces in Washington were trying to bring him down. An SEC commissioner with close ties to Detroit's Big Three automakers deliberately leaked information about an investigation the agency was conducting, suggesting that Tucker was bilking investors with a massive fraud scheme. Headlines accused him a perpetrating a hoax and claimed that his cars weren't real and his factory was a sham.  In fact, the Tucker '48 sedan was genuine, and everyone who saw it was impressed by what this upstart carmaker had achieved. But the SEC's investigation had compounded the company's financial problems and management conflicts, and a superior product was not enough to keep Tucker's dream afloat.  Here, Steve Lehto tackles the story of Tucker's amazing rise and tragic fall, relying on a huge trove of documents that has been used by no other writer to date. It is the first comprehensive, authoritative account of Tucker's magnificent car and his battles with the government. And in this book, Lehto finally answers the questions automobile aficionados have wondered about for decades: Exactly how and why was the production of such an innovative car killed?

Easy For You To Say is "Stuttering" John Melendez's memoir of his childhood being bullied in school for his stutter; his years as an on-air personality with The Howard Stern Show; and his subsequent ten-year career as a writer and on-air announcer for Jay Leno's Tonight Show. It details his famously acerbic relationships with celebrities he interviewed/insulted (Raquel Welch once punched him in the face). In the book, Howard Stern emerges as a surprisingly mean, stingy, and megalomaniacal boss-and Jay Leno as a seeming sufferer from OCD.

Double-bill of animated movies about a gang of prehistoric animals who become close friends. In 'Ice Age' (2002), the story begins at the dawn of the great ice age, when a group of three animals embark upon an epic journey. Sid the sloth, Manfred the mammal, and Diego the sabre-toothed tiger team up to help return a human baby to its father, and must risk life and limb as they traverse boiling lava pits and travel through dangerous ice caves to complete their mission. Along the way they also meet Scrat, a squirrel-rat determined to plant an acorn in a glacier. The film features the voices of John Leguizamo, Denis Leary and Jack Black. In 'Ice Age 2 - The Meltdown' (2006), Manny the woolly mammoth (voice of Ray Romano), Sid the sloth (Leguizamo), Diego the saber-toothed tiger (Leary), and the hapless prehistoric squirrel/rat known as Scrat (Chris Wedge) are back in this sequel to the popular 2002 film. Manny is ready to start a family, but nobody has seen another mammoth for a long time. In fact, Manny thinks he may be the last one. That is until he miraculously finds Ellie (Queen Latifah), the only female mammoth left in the world. The only problem being that they can't stand each other. Ellie comes with some excess baggage in the form of her two possum friends, Crash (Seann William Scott) and Eddie (Josh Peck), a couple of daredevil pranksters and cocky, loud-mouthed troublemakers. When a huge glacial dam holding off oceans of water is about to break, threatening the entire valley, the only chance of survival lies at the other end of the valley. So our three heroes, along with Ellie, Crash and Eddie, form the most unlikely family as they embark on a mission across an ever-changing, increasingly dangerous landscape.