Act One: An Autobiography

There's a reason that Act One, a massive bestseller when it came out in 1959, is still beloved by theater kids everywhere as the great Broadway memoir. Hart himself was as stage-struck as they come, and his story of how he rose, through lucky breaks and setbacks, from poverty in the Bronx to hit plays and major prizes, is charming, funny, and as brilliantly observed and constructed as any script he wrote. But you don't have to be a theater kid to love it: the book's final third especially, the story of his first Broadway production, is an edge-of-your-seat thriller that shows just how much sweat, anxiety, and ingenuity goes into putting on even the fizziest of farces.