Tinderbox: HBO's Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers

James Andrew Miller's Tinderbox is an oral history of HBO, from its uncertain beginnings in the 1970s and 1980s (when its programming was mainly comprised of comedy specials, fringe sports and film releases) to its blockbuster TV shows in the 1990s and beyond. At almost 1,000 pages, Miller's book contains a massive number of interviews with over 750 people inside and outside HBO — network executives, producers, actors, directors and many others. Unfortunately, far too many of the interviews are either unenlightening or transparently agenda-driven, and Miller could have applied more judiciousness to the sequencing of each interview. Nonetheless, the book is sufficiently well-sourced that it has a number of interesting anecdotes and becomes a very good history of the network (especially from the business/corporate side).