In his latest triumphant novel, Aaron Latham pits Texas guts against Hollywood glitz when a modern-day cowboy turned screenwriter dusts off his Stetson in order to solve a murder. Chick Goodnight has arrived in Hollywood to write a screenplay about his great-great-great-ever-so-great grandfather Jimmy Goodnight -- the legend who more or less invented the Texas cowboy during the 1870s (and who was featured in Latham's Code of the West and The Cowboy with the Tiffany Gun). As the film's director -- smart and beautiful Hollywood veteran Jamie Stone -- shows Chick how to write for the screen, he finds his quaint Western-inspired code of ethics challenged by an industry in which casting departments pimp for their producers and overzealous method actors feel obliged to seduce their costars. But culture shock becomes the least of Chick's worries when his cousin, a young aspiring actress, dies under suspicious circumstances. Shortly, Chick -- taking a few heroic pages from his own script -- is forced to investigate before someone else meets his maker. As Chick's misadventures take him from Hollywood to Texas and back again, Aaron Latham treats us to a bravura piece in which art imitates life imitating art.

In his latest triumphant novel, Aaron Latham pits Texas guts against Hollywood glitz when a modern-day cowboy turned screenwriter dusts off his Stetson in order to solve a murder. Chick Goodnight has arrived in Hollywood to write a screenplay about his great-great-great-ever-so-great grandfather Jimmy Goodnight -- the legend who more or less invented the Texas cowboy during the 1870s (and who was featured in Latham's Code of the West and The Cowboy with the Tiffany Gun). As the film's director -- smart and beautiful Hollywood veteran Jamie Stone -- shows Chick how to write for the screen, he finds his quaint Western-inspired code of ethics challenged by an industry in which casting departments pimp for their producers and overzealous method actors feel obliged to seduce their costars. But culture shock becomes the least of Chick's worries when his cousin, a young aspiring actress, dies under suspicious circumstances. Shortly, Chick -- taking a few heroic pages from his own script -- is forced to investigate before someone else meets his maker. As Chick's misadventures take him from Hollywood to Texas and back again, Aaron Latham treats us to a bravura piece in which art imitates life imitating art.

These were unique, complex, personal and professional relationships between master director John Ford and his two favorite actors, John Wayne and Ward Bond. The book provides a biography of each and a detailed exploration of Ford's work as it was intertwined with the lives and work of both Wayne and Bond (whose biography here is the first ever published). The book reveals fascinating accounts of ingenuity, creativity, toil, perseverance, bravery, debauchery, futility, abuse, masochism, mayhem, violence, warfare, open- and closed-mindedness, control and chaos, brilliance and stupidity, rationality and insanity, friendship and a testing of its limits, love and hate--all committed by a "half-genius, half-Irish" cinematic visionary and his two surrogate sons: Three Bad Men.

John Wayne - A Western Celebration celebrates 2007 as Duke's Centennial year since his birth in 1907. It is a stunning, oversized coffee-table book showcasing the entire and rare, Western poster collection in full color, of every one of Duke's Westerns - 85 full page color posters with a 250 word synopsis about each movie. Additional pages include superb artwork and design highlighting various aspects of his career as America's most popular and beloved cowboy.

With more than 1,100 impeccably sourced quotes from throughout John Wayne's 172-film career, John Wayne Speaks: The Ultimate John Wayne Quote Book provides what has often been missing from other Duke Wayne reference books: accuracy, context, and comprehensiveness. These quotations offer a deep dive into Wayne’s films and acting persona—the iconic American man of action whose sense of values and decency are a veneer covering a boiling pot of determination, courage, outrage, and even violence. The quotes in John Wayne Speaks are at once inspirational, humorous, touching, and revealing. Author and veteran journalist Mark Orwoll has created an overlay of categories into which each quote fits, making the manuscript easy for readers to find the type of quote—or even the exact quote, footnoted to identify its film—they may be searching for. But John Wayne Speaks is more than just a collection of the actor's movie lines. Orwoll has researched and written an in-depth introduction to Wayne's film career to put the quotes in a broader context. Movie-lovers will also appreciate the author's opinionated capsule reviews and production notes from Wayne's complete filmography. John Wayne Speaks is the quote book that every fan of the Duke needs and a delightful addition to any cinephile’s library.

A rare behind-the-scenes look at John Wayne: the legend, hero, and Hollywood icon of numerous epic Western films, including an Academy Award-winning performance in True Grit. No legend ever walked taller than “The Duke.” Now, author Michael Munn’s startling new biography of John Wayne sets the record straight on why Wayne didn’t serve in World War II, on director John Ford’s contribution to Wayne’s career, and the mega-star’s highs and lows: three failed marriages, and two desperate battles with cancer. Munn also discloses publicly, for the first time, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s plot to assassinate Wayne because of his outspoken, potentially influential anti-Communist views. Drawing on time spent with Wayne on the set of Brannigan—and almost 100 interviews with those who knew him—Munn’s rare, behind-the-scenes look proves this “absolute all-time movie star” was as much a hero in real life as he ever was on-screen.

Illustrates essential skills that self-sufficient men should have, including how to build a fire, how to survive a tornado, and how to change a tire.

The celebrated Hollywood icon comes fully to life in this complex portrait by noted film historian and master biographer Scott Eyman. Exploring Wayne's early life with a difficult mother and a feckless father, "Eyman gets at the details that the bean-counters and myth-spinners miss ... Wayne's intimates have told things here that they've never told anyone else" (Los Angeles Times). Eyman makes startling connections to Wayne's later days as an anti-Communist conservative, his stormy marriages to Latina women, and his notorious--and surprisingly long-lived--passionate affair with Marlene Dietrich.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.

"John Wayne remains a constant in American popular culture. Middle America grew up with him in the late 1920s and 1930s, went to war with him in the 1940s, matured with him in the 1950s, and kept the faith with him in the 1960s and 1970s. . . . In his person and in the persona he so carefully constructed, middle America saw itself, its past, and its future. John Wayne was his country’s alter ego." Thus begins John Wayne: American, a biography bursting with vitality and revealing the changing scene in Hollywood and America from the Great Depression through the Vietnam War. During a long movie career, John Wayne defined the role of the cowboy and soldier, the gruff man of decency, the hero who prevailed when the chips were down. But who was he, really? Here is the first substantive, serious view of a contradictory private and public figure.