This is the story of how an international model and a former poetry critic from Sweden dreamed up the most ambitious and glamorous internet startup ever attempted; how they convinced the world’s biggest fashion houses and Wall Street investment banks to invest $135 million into their plan; and, ultimately, how they burned through all the money in just over a year. The rise and fall of boo.com is an insider’s look at the 18 months of euphoria that ushered in the dot.com era.

Boo Hoo: A Dot.com Story from Concept to Catastrophe

Business & Money

Malmsten, Ernst

Portanger, Erik

Drazin, Charles

Economics

RANDOM HOUSE UK

Mapping the Past: A Search for Five Brothers at the Edge of Empire

Following his mother's death, Charles Drazin discovered a battered suitcase in his loft bearing the initials of his grandfather, a man he never knew. Inside was a treasure trove of photographs - of five men, in various far-flung locations. Following the most delicate of threads, he returned to the tiny village in Ireland where his mother was born, and began a search for the lives behind the images.Mapping Empire is the result. It is the story of five brothers from rural Ireland, who travelled around the world as officers in the Royal Engineer Corps –surveying, exploring, mapmaking, fighting – in the twilight years of the British Empire. Moving from Eire today back to Britain at the height of her Imperial power, and covering the domestic conflicts of the late nineteenth century and the devastation of the First World War, via some of the most remote, hostile and uncharted parts of the planet, this is an imaginative, intimate and powerful work of history, by a writer of rare power.

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Arrow

The story — straight out of Dumas — of the rise and fall of Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s first finance minister and the man who “outshone the Sun King.” Sometime late in 1664, the musketeer D’Artagnan rode beside a heavily-armoured carriage as it rumbled southwards from Paris, carrying his great friend Nicolas Fouquet to internal exile and life imprisonment in the fortress of Pignerol. There he would be incarcerated in a cell next door to the Man with the Iron Mask. From a glittering zenith as the King’s first minister, builder of the chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte, collector of books, patron of the arts and lover of beautiful women, Fouquet had fallen like Icarus. Charged with embezzlement, convicted and sentenced, it is in his downfall and incarceration that the man’s strength of character and grace emerge, as he somehow survives both solitary confinement and absence of books, pen and ink. The richness and contrasts of Fouquet’s remarkable story are brilliantly portrayed by Charles Drazin to reveal how the cunning, charisma and charm of Fouquet enchanted and beguiled, while at the same time sowed the seeds of his destruction.

The Man Who Outshone the Sun King

Sir Alexander Korda was one of the world's most important and charismatic movie moguls. In Britain, with films like Rembrandt, The Thief of Bagdad, The Four Feathers and The Third Man, he made movies that in their scale, glamour and sophistication equalled and often surpassed Hollywood. He worked closely with such legends as Samuel Goldwyn, David Selznick and Louis B. Mayer, and guided to stardom screen icons that included Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh and Charles Laughton. But for colour and incident none of these great showbusiness lives came even close to matching his own. Born in 1893 into a remote farming village on Hungary's Great Plain, he was by the end of the First World War running the country's largest film studio, but lost everything in the revolution and counter-revolution that followed. Forced into exile, he set out on an odyssey of the world's movie capitals that took in a decadent and hyperinflationary Berlin, a Hollywood nervously grappling with the talkies, and Paris, where, with Marcel Pagnol, he made Marius, one of the first great sound classics of French cinema. Settling in London with chameleon ease in the early 1930s, he quickly carved for himself a place at the heart of British culture and society. But behind the public facade of flamboyant film impresario, he played a hidden role that has never been previously documented as one of Britain's most important intelligence agents. A staunch ally of anti-appeasers Winston Churchill and Sir Robert Vansittart, he used his company London Films as a front for the ultra-secret 'Z' organization, and later played a key role in Britain's vital propaganda battle to bring the United States into the Second World War. Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished material, including the reminiscences and diaries of people who knew Korda, Charles Drazin's biography goes behind the myths to reveal the many sides of one of the twentieth century's most intriguing figures.

Korda: Britain's Only Movie Mogul

Humor & Entertainment

SIDGWICK JACKSON

Filmmaking is a business—someone has to pay the bills. For much of the industry’s history, that role was shouldered by the studios. The rise of independent filmmakers then led to the rise of independent financiers. But what happens if bad weather closes down a production or a director’s vision pays no heed to the limitations of time and money?\nEnter Film Finances. The company was founded in London in 1950 to insure against the risk that a film would exceed its original budget or not be completed on time. Its pioneering development of the “completion guarantee”—the financial instrument that provides the essential security for investors to support independent filmmaking—ultimately led to the creation of many thousands of films, including some of the most celebrated ever made: Moulin Rouge (1953), Dr. No (1962), The Outsiders (1982), Pulp Fiction (1994), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), La La Land (2016), and more.\nFilm Finances’s role in filmmaking was little known outside the industry until 2012, when it opened its historical archive to scholars. Drawing on these previously private documents as well as interviews with its executives, Making Hollywood Happen tells the company’s story through seven decades of postwar cinema history and chronicles the growth of the international independent film industry. Focusing on a business that has operated at the meeting point between money and art for more than seventy years, this lavishly illustrated book goes to the heart of how the movie business works.

Making Hollywood Happen: Seventy Years of Film Finances (Wisconsin Film Studies)

Industries

University of Wisconsin Press

Late in 1664, the musketeer D'Artagnan rode beside a carriage as it left Paris, carrying his friend Nicolas Fouquet to life imprisonment in a cell next door to the Man in the Iron Mask. From a glorious zenith as Louis XIV's first minister and Cardinal Mazarin's protégé and eventual protector; builder of the stunningly opulent chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte; and patron of the arts and lover of beautiful women, Fouquet had suffered a wretched decline.
 The story of the rise and fall of Nicolas Fouquet is both compelling and unforgettable. Charles Drazin's beautifully written and vivid account brings to life Fouquet's remarkable gains in fortune, influence, and power, as well as the lavish and hazardous world of the royal court in seventeenth-century France.

The Man Who Outshone the Sun King: A Life of Gleaming Opulence and Wretched Reversal in the Reign of Louis XIV

Da Capo Press

(Limelight). Half a century after its opening,  The Third Man  remains an unquestioned masterpiece of film artistry and, for many, the greatest British movie ever made. Whether it is Harry Lime's magical first appearance or the celebrated cuckoo clock speech or the climactic chase through the sewers beneath Vienna or the haunting theme music of Anton Karas, the film contains some of the most memorable moments in screen history. Drawing on both contemporary documents and accounts of the people involved,  In Search of The Third Man  explores the many myths that over the years have grown around this extraordinary film, and seeks to unravel the facts from the fiction.  "...you'll want to read The Third Man...The story of the film's creation is as intriguing as the film itself"  Leonard Maltin, Playboy

In Search of the Third Man

Movies

METHUEN CO.

William Heinemann

The story of the rise and fall of Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s first finance minister.Sometime late in 1664, the musketeer D’Artagnan rode beside a heavily-armoured carriage as it rumbled southwards from Paris, carrying his great friend Nicolas Fouquet to internal exile and life imprisonment in the fortress of Pignerol. There he would be incarcerated in a cell next door to the Man with the Iron Mask. . .From a glittering zenith as the King’s first minister, builder of the chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte, collector of books, patron of the arts and lover of beautiful women, Fouquet had fallen like Icarus. Charged with embezzlement, he was convicted and sentenced to banishment until the King intervened to change his sentence to life imprisonment.Charles Drazin’s riveting account brings to life the rich and hazardous world in which Foucquet lived. But it is in his downfall and incarceration, which he bore with great fortitude, courage and humour, that Fouquet’s strength of character and grace emerge. The richness and contrasts of his remarkable story are done full justice in this compelling book.

The Man Who Outshone the Sun King: The Rise and Fall of Nicolas Fouquet

History

The Hollywood model of cinema as mass-market spectacle—as entertainment rather than an art—is more dominant than ever, its box-office power amounting to an effective monopoly. France has been one of the most active countries to challenge this hegemony. A key motivation has been its sense of a distinct film tradition that has always provided the most sustained alternative model to Hollywood. The respected film critic Charles Drazin has written what will become the definitive history of French cinema. Drazin examines France’s role as the inventor of cinema and its pivotal influence over the language of cinema across the past century. Along the way, he highlights the influence of Hollywood directors such as Hitchcock, Ford, and Hawks on Truffaut’s generation, as well as the impact of British directors such as Ken Loach and Mike Leigh on current filmmakers. French Cinema seeks to capture some essence of French cinema through the key personalities and episodes in its history, but it is also the story of a conflict between two traditions that continues to this day.

French Cinema

Faber&Faber

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Drazin, Charles. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Drazin, Charles

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Drazin, Charles. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Boo Hoo: A Dot.com Story from Concept to Catastrophe

Mapping the Past: A Search for Five Brothers at the Edge of Empire

The Man Who Outshone the Sun King

Korda: Britain's Only Movie Mogul

Making Hollywood Happen: Seventy Years of Film Finances (Wisconsin Film Studies)

The Man Who Outshone the Sun King: A Life of Gleaming Opulence and Wretched Reversal in the Reign of Louis XIV

In Search of the Third Man

Mapping the Past: A Search for Five Brothers at the Edge of Empire

The Man Who Outshone the Sun King: The Rise and Fall of Nicolas Fouquet

French Cinema