Generation Friends: An Inside Look at the Show that Defined a Television Era

He is an adjunct professor of writing and comedy history at New York University, as well as the author of Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes (Continuum, 2007), Another Fine Mess: A History of American Film Comedy (Chicago Review Press, 2010), Sitcom: A History in 24 Episodes from I Love Lucy to Community (Chicago Review Press, 2014), Just a Shot Away: Peace, Love, and Tragedy with the Rolling Stones at Altamont (Thomas Dunne Books, 2018), and the forthcoming Generation Friends: An Inside Look at the Show That Defined a Television Era (Dutton, September 2019). Booklist named Another Fine Mess one of the ten best arts books of 2010, and Just a Shot Away received rave reviews, including from the New York Times Book Review, which called it “the most blisteringly impassioned music book of the season.”

Austerlitz grew up in Los Angeles and is a graduate of Yale University (B.A. in film studies, 2001) and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (M.A. in cinema studies, 2003). He lives with his wife and children in Brooklyn.