There's no business that's bigger or more exciting than show business, and for almost a century Variety has been the single most authoritative and influential publication devoted to the entertainment industry, including the worlds of movies, television, theater, and live performance.

With colorful lingo that has enriched the American language, a talent for spotting trends and events long before anyone else does, and statistics to back up its hunches, Variety is one of the most widely known and oft-quoted periodicals in our movie-mad, celebrity-obsessed world.

If Variety could go back and cover the great events of show-business history with all the style, verve, and insight for which it's famous - and add dramatic, revealing photographs - the result would be The Variety History of Show Business.

Each of forty chapters focuses on a pivotal event, introduces its key players, and explores its longterm impact on show business. The reader journeys to Hollywood in 1913, where Cecil B.

DeMille shoots The Squaw Man and inadvertendy brings an entire industry West; to the opening night of Eugene O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon in 1920, which establishes Broadway as a center for serious theater; to the premiere of the first talking picture in 1927 and the first Cannes Film Festival in 1946; to the final concert of the most popular singing group of the '60s and the first broadcast on MTV in 1981.

Along the way, we meet the actors, entertainers, producers, directors, writers, agents, financiers, and a host of other colorful characters who people the world of entertainment.