The first behind-the-scenes history of the organization behind the Academy Awards. For all the near-fanatic attention brought each year to the Academy Awards, the organization that dispenses those awards—the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—has yet to be understood. To date, no one has ever produced a thorough account of the Academy’s birth and its awkward adolescence, and the few reports on those periods from outside the organization have always had a glancing, cursory quality. Yet ...