'Easily the year's best Hollywood biog.' Independent on Sunday 'Ball Of Fire reveals all about house- wife superstar Lucille Ball. She made the top-rated TV show in America before her husband's serial adulteries practically sunk it.' Sunday Herald To viewers all over the world, Lucille Ball remains the ultimate screwball housewife, getting in and out of outlandish scrapes with hilarous finesse. But Stefan Kanfer's biography looks behind the image, tracing Ball's comedic genius to its beginnings in a lonely childhood in upstate New York. She yearned to make people laugh, to attain stardom and love. Then a Cuban bandleader called Desi came into her life to make her wealthy and famous -- and nearly destroyed her in the process. Kanfer chronicles the runaway success of I Love Lucy, the fiery marriage and eventual split from Desi, and Ball's struggle to manage both a business empire and her own rebellious children. 'A wonderful and poignant book . . . Kanfer portays Lucille Ball as insatiably anxious and insecure, a woman whose search for a father-figure would only ever find the unlikely and unholdable Desi . . . Kanfer pulls no punches over Lucy the pain in the neck but he gives a superb picture of how she and Desi changed television.' David Thomson

Marlon Brando will never cease to fascinate us: for his triumphs as an actor (On the Waterfront, The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris), as well as his disasters; for the power of the screen portrayals he gave, and for his turbulent, tumultuous personal life. Seamlessly intertwining the man and the work, Kanfer takes us through Brando's troubled childhood, to his arrival in New York in the 1940s, where he studied with the legendary Stella Adler, and at the age of twenty-three became the toast of Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire. Kanfer expertly examines each of Brando's films - from The Men in 1950 to The Score in 2001 - making clear the evolution of Brando's singular genius, while also shedding light on the cultural evolution of Hollywood itself. And he brings into focus Brando's self-destructiveness, his lifelong dissembling, his deeply ambivalent feelings towards his chosen vocation, and the tragedies that shadowed his final years. This is a never-before-seen portrait of one of the most extraordinary talents of the twentieth century.

Today the Borscht Belt is recalled through the nostalgic lens of summer swims, Saturday night dances, and comedy performances. But its current state, like that of many other formerly glorious regions, is nothing like its earlier status. Forgotten about and exhausted, much of its structural environment has been left to decay. The Borscht Belt, which features essays by Stefan Kanfer and Jenna Weissman Joselit, presents Marisa Scheinfeld's photographs of abandoned sites where resorts, hotels, and bungalow colonies once boomed in the Catskill Mountain region of upstate New York.

The book assembles images Scheinfeld has shot inside and outside locations that once buzzed with life as year-round havens for generations of people. Some of the structures have been lying abandoned for periods ranging from four to twenty years, depending on the specific hotel or bungalow colony and the conditions under which it closed. Other sites have since been demolished or repurposed, making this book an even more significant documentation of a pivotal era in American Jewish history.

The Borscht Belt presents a contemporary view of more than forty hotel and bungalow sites. From entire expanses of abandoned properties to small lots containing drained swimming pools, the remains of the Borscht Belt era now lie forgotten, overgrown, and vacant. In the absence of human activity, nature has reclaimed the sites, having encroached upon or completely overtaken them. Many of the interiors have been vandalized or marked by paintball players and graffiti artists. Each ruin lies radically altered by the elements and effects of time. Scheinfeld s images record all of these developments.

This definitive biography of one of the world’s greatest comedians unflinchingly yet affectionately uncovers the man behind the cigar.

Here is the amazing career of the man the world recognized as Groucho: the improbable disasters of the vaudeville years; the Marx Brothers, an act so funny W.C. Fields refused to follow it; the unprecedented Broadway success of The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers; the cinematic triumphs of Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera; and the marvelous come-back career as king of the game show hosts with You Bet Your Life. Here, too, is the man himself: a lonely middle child who aspired to be a doctor; a man who sabotaged three marriages; a father alternately indulgent and cruel. Intelligent and thorough, hilarious and sad, Groucho is a spectacular biography of the century’s most influential comedian.

As Roger Rosenblatt put it, "What makes "Serious Business" a special treat is that it is like the best of the cartoons itself--funny, touching, and infused with thoughtful joy." This generously illustrated history of animation looks at the creation and celluloid careers of such American icons as Felix the Cat, Jiminy Cricket, Mickey and Minnie, Popeye and Olive Oyl, Goofy, Yogi Bear, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Daffy Duck, Tom and Jerry, and the Pink Panther. Art and commerce collide again and again as Stefan Kanfer wittily probes the origins of such diverse cartoon families as the Flintstones, the Jetsons, and the Simpsons and looks at the phenomenal success of feature-length animated films such as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and "The Lion King," "Serious Business" is itself a classic of animation, bringing to life an art and an industry whose creations have now worked their way into every corner of American life.

Groucho Marx may be the funniest man who ever lived.  Here in one volume are the classics of Marxian mayhem: excerpts from the scripts of the immortal movies, passages from his books, his articles for magazines ranging from The New Yorker to the Saturday Evening Post, the  choicest ad-libs and quips from his long-running game show, You Bet Your Life, and selected letters, including his classic correspondence with T. S. Eliot.  It's all here-the finest and funniest work by this century's most influential comedian, that man of whom Woody Allen said, "He is simply unique in the same way Picasso and Stravinsky are, and I believe his outrageous, unsentimental disregard for order will be equally funny a thousand years from now.  In addition to all this, he makes me laugh."

In the words of Groucho Marx:

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas.
How he go in my pajamas I don't know.

Time flies like an arrow.  Fruit flies like a banana.

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.  Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

With a scholar's precision and a novelist's eye, Stefan Kanfer tells the inside story of De Beers Consolidated Mines - from the nineteenth century diamond rush that transformed Johannes De Beer's humble South African farm into an exotic klondike, to the Oppenheimers' shadow empire that has achieved umatched global reach.

Stefan Kanfer, acclaimed biographer of Lucille Ball and Groucho Marx, now gives us the definitive life of Marlon Brando, seamlessly intertwining the man and the work to give us a stunning and illuminating appraisal. Beginning with Brando's turbulent childhood, Kanfer follows him to New York where he made his star-making Broadway debut as Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" at age twenty-three. Brando then decamped for Hollywood, and Kanfer looks at each of Brando's films over the years--from "The Men" in 1950 to "The Score" in 2001--offering deft and insightful analysis of his sometimes brilliant, sometimes baffling performances. And, finally, Kanfer brings into focus Brando's self-destructiveness, ambivalence toward his craft, and the tragedies that shadowed his last years.

No, Groucho is not my real name, I'm just breaking it in for a friend.' Presenting the greatest and most hilarious examples of Groucho, one of the most influential and well-loved figures in the long and glittering history of comedy. From early scripts to complete screenplays, from magazine funnies to fascinating personal correspondence, via books, greedy banks, even greedier lawyers and the coming of television, Kanfer's collection captures the essence of Groucho's inimitable comic genius. 'I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception...

In this comprehensive biography of one of the great movie icons of our time, Stefan Kanfer, the acclaimed biographer of Lucille Ball, Groucho Marx, and Marlon Brando, illuminates the life and career of Humphrey Bogart. Along the way, Kanfer gives us a wide-reaching cultural appraisal of the movies many of us know and love as masterpieces of American cinema: "The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, To Have and Have Not," and countless others. He appraises each of the films with an unfailing critical eye, weaving in lively accounts of behind-the-scenes fun and friendships, including, of course, the great love story of Bogart and Lauren Bacall. What emerges in these pages is a portrait of a great Hollywood life, and the final word on why there can only ever be one Bogie.