Forget Ari and Chapek: 20 Books That Really Explain Hollywood

Hollywood has two shiny new books to obsess over this week. Ari Emanuel has published his somewhat unpleasant yet utterly engaging memoir where — pity Jim Wiatt, Jeffrey Katzenberg, CAA’s Jeff Jacobs or any of a sea of others — scores are settled, people are ridiculed and one Homeric hero emerges (no need for a spoiler alert). Meanwhile, Bob Chapek’s burn book lands today, where, yes, he details how one Bob Iger stabbed him in the front. Man, what a relatable saga: How can you CEO when the old CEO is being such a petty brat?

Anyway. Read them. By all means.

But if you really want to understand how Hollywood works, you’ll need more than the latest masters of the universe making sure their version of events gets memorialized.

Because almost everything happening in this business right now has happened before.

So I’ve put together a Hollywood curriculum. No thrillers or beach reads here — we had plenty of those on The Ankler’s summer reading list.

Instead, here is my syllabus: the 20 books that explain how this place really works.