Born as an exercise in studio self-promotion, over the last 70 years the Academy Awards have been responsible for more crimes against art, fashion, taste and talent than the complete oeuvre of Cher (herself an Awards-night favourite). Great actors and directors have been consistently, almost methodically, overlooked by the Academy in favour of journeymen or novelty acts. Entire careers have passed without reward while shockingly mediocre pictures have been over-garlanded with honours. So why do the Oscars matter so much?

This completely unauthorised Pocket Essential guide to the Oscars explains how the Awards can help us to understand the history of Hollywood. In a decade-by-decade account, it details how the Academy mirrored, endorsed or rejected industry trends, be they technical (The Jazz Singer's exclusion from competition at the first awards in 1927/8), artistic (the long-standing favour extended to period dramas), or political (the Academy's capitulation in the face of McCarthyism).

The book also includes a full list of Oscar winners in every category, as well as the author's own nominations for Worst Oscar-nominated Films and Shocking Oscar Oversights, making it the best-value, most up-to-date guide available to this annual public celebration of money, envy, spite and the movies.

John Atkinson worked at the British Film Institute and is a consultant to publishers of Film and Media Studies.