50 MPH Book Club
Want to take your 50 MPH engagement to the next level? Study the landscape into which Speed was born by digging into these selected works, some of them written by guests of the show!
Keanu Reeves: Most Triumphant – The Movies and Meaning of an Irrepressible Icon Alex Pappademas, 2022
A tribute to and exploration of the magic behind one of Hollywood’s most legendary and unknowable stars, Keanu Reeves, and the profound lessons we can learn from his success.
Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood Mark Harris, 2008
The epic human drama behind the making of the five movies nominated for Best Picture in 1967, and through them, the larger story of the cultural revolution that transformed Hollywood, and America, forever.
Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel Peter L. Winklery, 2011
The first book to cover the entire legendary life and career of the man who hung out with James Dean, Elvis Presley, and Jack Nicholson, made Easy Rider, and came back big after recovering from years of alcoholism and drug addiction.
Dennis Hopper: Interviews Nick Dawson, 2012
A compendium covering every decade of Dennis Hopper’s career, featuring conversations from 1957 through to 2009, not only capturing him at the significant points of his tumultuous time in Hollywood, but also focusing on the lesser-known aspects of the man.
The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood’s Kings of Carnage Nick de Semlyen, 2023
The behind-the-scenes story of the action heroes who ruled 1980s and ’90s Hollywood and the beloved films that made them stars, including Die Hard, First Blood, The Terminator, and more.
Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie Eric Lichtenfeld, 2004
An authoritative and entertaining history of the action film that studies its trends, key components, and visual excesses and traces the genre’s evolution to reveal how it has come to assume its place of prominence in American culture.
The Nineties: A Book Chuck Klosterman, 2022
A wise and funny reckoning with the decade that gave us slacker/grunge irony about the sin of trying too hard, during the greatest shift in human consciousness of any decade in American history.