Boom and Bust traces the movie industry through the momentous decade of the 1940s. It discusses changes in the structure of the studio system—including the shift to independent production—and the dominant stars, genres, and production trends through the period.

Thomas Schatz is Philip G. Warner Professor of Communication at the University of Texas, Austin. His previous books include The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (1996) and Hollywood Film Genres (1980). He is a regular contributor to various television programs on film, including the PBS series The American Cinema.

"Boom and Bust constitutes an essential background for anyone interested in this complicated decade. . . . By dealing with break and continuity together, Schatz is able to tell several histories of American film: the history of the cinema's recruitment by politics, but also the history of industrial practices that move at their own irreducible speed."—Dana Polan, Film Quarterly

"This book represents some of the finest scholarship in the field. . . . Schatz draws on a broad range of archival and trade press sources, and organizes his findings to highlight the dynamics of studio house styles, executive management and the production strategies of the major studios as the studio system coped with an array of 'momentous reversals.'"—Matthew Bernstein, author of Walter Wanger, Hollywood Independent