Ever since his big screen breakthrough as phobia ridden accountant Leo Bloom in The Producers, Gene Wilder has been one of America's most beloved comic actors. For five decades, Wilder has entertained audiences in some of the funniest films ever made, including Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and Stir Crazy. Brian Scott Mednick's fascinating new biography Gene Wilder: Funny and Sad (BearManor Media) reveals a very serious and private side to Wilder that audiences don't get to see. The book traces Wilder's humble beginnings in 1930s Milwaukee as a shy child who learned early on that being...

According to an old saying, there are eight million stories in the naked city. In this absorbing collection, Brian Scott Mednick offers fifteen. Among the inhabitants of Mednick's Manhattan are Feldman, a meek accountant whose quiet evening at home is interrupted by a wrong number; Fletcher and Lloyd, two former friends whose encounters over the years bring back painful college memories; Leroy, a distinguished black gentleman who entwines a young law student into his world of drinking; and Jack and Margaret, whose May-December attraction provides the basis for the title story. At turns both...