Dazzling parties and dashed hopes: To understand Hollywood, you need these 50 books

Joan Didion’s novel is a cutting-edge study of a decaying Hollywood, saturated “with copycat movies, predatory men, hacks and hangers-on,” wrote Matt. “The most remarkable aspect of Didion’s portrait is not the ruthless precision with which it renders the film business then, but the clarity with which it corresponds to the film business now.”