Mr. Schickel takes on eight of Hollywood's finest directors in conversation-Hitchcock, Capra, Minnelli, Cukor, Hawks, Wellman, Vidor, and Walsh-reminiscing about their working lives which spanned the most intriguing decades of American filmmaking. Each of these directors created a canon of work that even today sustains critical analysis without sacrificing popular appeal. "Immensely readable and richly informative...it provides a real education in...