Emanuel Goldenberg was born in Romania and from the age of ten grew up in New York's Lower East Side. He trained at the legendary Theater Guild, changed his name, and starred in many successful Broadway plays before moving to Hollywood. Among his most famous films were Double Indemnity with Barbara Stanwyck, The Stranger with Orson Welles, Key Largo with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston, The Cincinnati Kid with Steve McQueen, and, of course, Little Caesar. After twenty successful years in film, Robinson's career was shattered by the McCarthy Commission. Although there was never any concrete proof that Robinson was in fact a member of the Communist party, it took five years for him to clear his name. In this fascinating biography, Alan L. Gansberg reveals the man behind the public face, his many memorable roles among more than 100 films, and his struggle to find steady work in Hollywood again. Includes 16 pages of photos.

Much analysis of gangster movies has been based upon a study of the gangster as a malign figuration of the American Dream, originally set in the era of the Depression. This text extends previous analysis of the genre by examining the evolution of gangster movies from the 1930s to the contemporary period and by placing them in the context of cultural and cinematic issues such as masculinity, consumerism and technology. With a close examination of many films from Scarface and Public Enemy to Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction , this book provides a fascinating insight into a topical and popular subject.

A WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR Who said that dictatorship was dead? The world today is full of Strong Men and their imitators. Caesarism is alive and well. Yet in modern times it's become a strangely neglected subject. Ferdinand Mount opens up a fascinating exploration of how and why Caesars seize power and why they fall. "Fast paced and impassioned" -- Sunday Telegraph "Wonderfully wry" -- The Guardian "...a delight" -- Sunday Times "Delicious work, beautifully and acerbically written" -- Wall Street Journal There is a comforting illusion shared by historians and political commentators from Fukuyama back to Macaulay, Mill and Marx, that history progresses in a nice straight line towards liberal democracy or socialism, despite the odd hiccup. In reality, every democracy, however sophisticated or stable it may look, has been attacked or actually destroyed by a would-be Caesar, from Ancient Greece to the present day. Marx was wrong. This Caesarism is not an absurd throwback, it is an ever-present danger. There are Big Caesars who set out to achieve total social control and Little Caesars who merely want to run an agreeable kleptocracy without opposition: from Julius Caesar and Oliver Cromwell through Napoleon and Bolivar, to Mussolini, Salazar, De Gaulle and Trump. The saga of Boris Johnson and Brexit frequently crops up in this author's narrative as a vivid, if Lilliputian instance of the same phenomenon. The final part of this book describes how and why would-be Caesars come to grief, from the Gunpowder Plot to Trump's march on the Capitol and the ejection of Boris Johnson by his own MPs, and ends with a defence of the grubby glories of parliamentary politics and a thought-provoking roadmap of the way back to constitutional government.

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The figure of Julius Caesar has loomed large in the United States since its very beginning, admired and evoked as a gateway to knowledge of politics, war, and even national life. In this lively and perceptive book, the first to examine Caesar's place in modern American culture, Maria Wyke investigates how his use has intensified in periods of political crisis, when the occurrence of assassination, war, dictatorship, totalitarianism or empire appears to give him fresh relevance. Her fascinating discussion shows how—from the Latin classroom to the Shakespearean stage, from cinema, television and the comic book to the internet—Caesar is mobilized in the U.S. as a resource for acculturation into the American present, as a prediction of America’s future, or as a mode of commercial profit and great entertainment.