Tom Shales | Author | LibraryThing

About the Author

Includes the name: Tom Shales

Works by Tom Shales

Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN (2011) 521 copies, 7 reviews

The American Film Heritage: Impressions from the American Film Institute Archives (1972) 17 copies

Legends : remembering America's greatest stars (1989) 10 copies

On the Air (1982) 7 copies

Work Explorer

Tagged

2012 (6) American (5) audio (6) biography (29) broadcasting (8) business (8) comedy (58) culture (12) currently-reading (9) ebook (20) entertainment (40) ESPN (13) film (8) first edition (9) hardcover (10) history (66) humor (66) interviews (11) journalism (7) Kindle (14) media (26) memoir (18) Movies & TV (5) NBC (6) New York (11) NF (6) non-fiction (224) oral history (21) own (12) pop culture (44) read (26) Saturday Night Live (41) SNL (35) sports (63) television (194) television history (6) to-read (99) TV series (6) unread (11) USA (8)

Common Knowledge

Legal name: Shales, Thomas William
Birthdate: 1944-11-03
Date of death: 2024-01-13
Gender: male
Nationality: USA
Birthplace: Elgin, Illinois, USA
Education: American University
Occupations: television citic
film critic
Organizations: Washington Examiner (1968-71)
The Washington Post (1972-2010)
National Public Radio
Awards and honors: Pulitzer Prize (Criticism, 1988)

Members

Reviews

Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN by James Andrew Miller

753 pages long.....and about half of it was the business end of ESPN. Ok, that was not what I was looking for. I did get some inside dirt, but all the deals and figures and counter offers and buyouts really bored me. Worth picking up for the other stuff....stories are told by the tv personalities own words, and it's interesting to see (for example) how Kornheiser says "A" and then Tirico says "B", one paragraph right after another. Too bad we won't know which story is true.

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kwskultety | 6 other reviews | Jul 4, 2023 |

Live from New York : the complete, uncensored… by James Andrew Miller

Reading this a couple of weeks before the 40th anniversary show was completely worth the time.

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ByronDB | 20 other reviews | May 17, 2022 |

Live from New York: An Uncensored History of… by Tom Shales

Mandatory for any fan of the show.
But also for anyone wondering what it feels like to be part of an innovative team.
I can’t grasp the fact that this show ran for so long, with so many technical and human challenges every week.

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jbrieu | 20 other reviews | Nov 6, 2020 |

Live From New York: An Uncensored History of… by Tom Shales

This is the second oral history I've read, the first being the Daily Show: An Oral History which came out in 2016, so quite a bit after 'Live From New York'. Different authors, similar format - are these oral history books people are putting out connecting in any way or are people just aping style? I think the Daily Show was put together a bit better, but since it's all interviews they probably just had better material to work with.

This book is prime time fluff, a diet soda of interviews and anecdotes. It was great. I do wish they had cut it off at 1995 (published in 2002) because the perspectives of performers (successful after their run or not) differed greatly from the perspective of performers currently on the show during their interview. It would also allow a second book to be published (in 2022?) covering 1995-2015 which would be really neat since that is more of my SNL history. (yes, I know they updated this book in 2015ish to cover new years, but that's not the copy I have and it will still suffer from the 'currently on the show' atmosphere that dulls reflection).… (more)

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sarcher | 20 other reviews | Mar 22, 2018 |

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