Brian Raftery Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Brian Raftery is an accomplished American author. He is also a journalist and a podcaster.

Readers may recognize him for his works on pop culture, which extend to the most recent Hannibal Lecter: A Life book and the 2019 book Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen, which were both Simon & Schuster published releases.

He is also the writer and the host of the narrative podcasts ‘Mission Accomplished’, ‘The Hollywood Hack’, ‘Do We Get to Win This Time?’ and ‘Gene & Roger’. All of the podcasts are produced by Spotify and The Ringer.

Brian previously served as a senior writer for Wired. His writing has been featured in a variety of publications and places, which include The Ringer, GQ, The New York Times, New York, and more.

Brian is married. He resides in Burbank, California, along with his wife and their daughters.

Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen is a 2019 book by Brian Raftery. If you are a big fan of cultural analyses and love movies– and bonus if you have a soft spot in your heart for the nineties and want to swim in that nostalgia once more– this is the book that you need to run and not walk to get!

From a modern movie expert and a veteran on writing about culture, this is an analysis and a celebration of the movies that came out in 1999. There were a lot of them, and they were incredible. This is the book that Gillian Flynn has recommended as being an ‘absolute must for any movie-lover or pop-culture nut’.

The year was 1999, and Hollywood had seemingly exploded with a variety of movie offerings that was positively amazing in its reach and spectacle. Movies hitting the theaters included The Matrix, Office Space, Fight Club, The Sixth Sense, Election, The Blair Witch Project, Being John Malkovich, American Beauty, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, The Virgin Suicides, Boys Don’t Cry, Magnolia, Three Kings, The Best Man, and more.

There were just some of the incredible titles that were released in the course of a movie year that can only be described as ‘dizzying’. This was the year in which a group of film makers and crew were able to take cinema to new limits, taking the audience along with them for the experience.

Liberated from the restraints of technology, budget, or even taste, this group of people were able to put out a list of soon to be classics that were able to confront and bring to life every topic that could be imagined, from violence to sex to the end of the world. The consequence was a group of films that would prove to be deeply influential, change and influence film making, and give the audience a little peak into the 21st century that was on its way. This watershed moment also led to the Apple AirPort, The Sopranos, and unlimited DVD rentals from Netflix.

This is a celebration of the movies that came out that year as well as an exploration of how the movies were made and the impact that it had on the audience and how it revised the way that we see the world. Brian has also included over a hundred new (and exclusive!) interviews with directors and actors, from Sofia Coppola to David Fincher and more.

Funny, interesting, and one of those books that belongs on the shelf, this is one book you can’t miss. Author Chuck Klosterman had positive things to say about this work, describing it as being a ‘complete portrait of what it was like to spend a year inside a movie theater at the best possible moment in time’. If you weren’t there, you’ll feel like you were! Grab a copy for yourself to see what gems have yet to be revealed.

Hannibal Lecter: A Life is a 2026 book by Brian Raftery. Are you familiar with one of the most famous villains ever to grace the silver screen? Quietly terrifying, Hannibal Lecter has become so well-known that he has become a part of pop culture forever, and has even seen a strange transition from scary villain to anti-hero who is unexpectedly adored.

Raftery puts together a completely unique biography that is one of a kind that readers who are familiar with the character will love and those who are not will find supremely interesting! This book pulls from exclusive interviews as well as archival materials that have previously gone unseen.

This book goes into the many different lives of Hannibal Lecter as well as his many crimes. It traces the debut that he made in Red Dragon, the 1981 novel by Thomas Harris. He also became infamous through his inclusion in films such as Manhunter by Michael Mann and the Academy Award-winning movie The Silence of the Lambs by Jonathan Demme. He also made a comeback of sorts in Hannibal, the cult hit television series.

The book also goes into the life and career of Harris. Harris is the bestselling author who had a passion for reporting, an eye for detail, and connections to the FBI that helped him to create the character of Lecter. This book also showcases the many different ways that the rise of Lecter was also significant and reflected an increasing obsession of people in America with serial killers.

With new interviews with figures from Lecter’s past– actor Brian Cox, director Mann, former FBI special agent John Douglas, this book is well reported and entertaining, a look at how one of the biggest villains and bad guys ever to be made was born and unexpectedly came to be deeply beloved by fans.

An intriguing look at one of the scariest bad guys to ever be conceived of, this is the perfect book for readers who always want to find out more about specific interesting subjects. It’s full of details, interviews, trivia, and informative information that especially fans of Hannibal Lecter will not want to miss out on.