Growing up, I was a huge fan of Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show—it was appointment viewing for my dad and me nearly every night. So I was eager to read Carson the Magnificent, but I ended up bitterly disappointed. What should’ve been a thoughtful biography of a man who defined late-night television for decades came off more like a stream-of-consciousness love letter. Zehme’s writing is over-the-top and ostentatious, with paragraph-long tangents stuffed with trivia—some of it interesting, most of it repeated. The structure is a mess, and the organization, or lack thereof, makes it hard to follow. I slogged through overly long sections that felt more like filler than insight. Worst […]