Joel Engel

Last Stop, the Twilight Zone Joel Engel

This landmark first biography of Rod Serling offers fascinating insights into his life, from the nearly idyllic childhood that he could never recapture to the haunting World War II experiences that informed his imagination and his sudden emergence as one of television's Golden Age luminaries, responsible for shaping the medium itself. Last Stop, The Twilight Zone paints a startling picture of the complex, unhappy man beneath Serling's gregarious yet suave public persona. Despite receiving critical and popular acclaim, Serling was doubtful of his own talent, compulsively accepting nearly any job offered, from writing to pitching products. Prolific by any measure, he felt imprisoned by his most famous creation, The Twilight Zone. Here is the Rod Serling we never knew, the man whose success overshadowed his ambitions and, eventually, his life-a life that ended long before it should have.