Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies

"Dave Itzkoff takes us on an extraordinary journey, and in the process reveals Chayefsky's prognosis for TV, a prognosis we've chosen to ignore even as it's come true before our eyes."—Forbes

"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Those words, spoken by an unhinged anchorman named Howard Beale, "the mad prophet of the airwaves," took America by storm in 1976, when Network became a sensation. With a superb cast (including Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, and Robe...