Oscar Wars

Oscar Wars treats the Academy Awards as a decades-long battlefield rather than a glittering ceremony, with each chapter zooming into a specific year, feud, or category to tell a larger story about Hollywood and American culture. Michael Schulman traces the fights behind the gold statuettes from the Academy's earliest industry banquets through iconic controversies and the notorious Moonlight/La La Land mix-up.

Drawing on both legendary anecdotes and lesser-known behind-the-scenes drama, the book uses the Oscars as a lens on shifting power, taste, and politics across nearly a century of American film.