The literary mind and the boob tube are often thought to have little in common, but the two have been trysting in dimly lit rooms since television’s earliest days. To prove the point, Doug Bauer asked a number of the finest writers of our time to reveal their own forays into a medium that has been called everything from a vast wasteland to the electronic dream machine of the global village.

The results are surprising, passionate, very personal, and often downright hilarious. From Nora Ephron on The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Nick Hornby on The West Wing, Susan Cheever on Father Knows Best to Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Amos ’n’ Andy, the full range of televised fare is captured—sitcoms and soaps, police dramas and reality TV, the very new and the very old, and the much criticized and denounced and the truly iconic and beloved.

Prime Times is an eclectic gathering of autobiography, memory, and blade-sharp observation, all bound by the common—and, after all, literary—experience of watching other people’s lives while trying to understand one’s own.