Street Fight is muscularly reported journalism trained on the people and events that shaped Sesame Street from the 1990s to the present. Expanding from Street Gang, Michael Davis’s acclaimed origin story of the series, this revelatory new book probes deeply into the decisions made by Sesame Workshop, the New York-based corporate non-profit that has weathered political and financial storms, all while upholding aspirational values instilled in the late-1960s. 

Hundreds of eyewitnesses provide on-the-record recollections of the show’s evolution in the narrative and a series of chapter-ending oral histories.

Interwoven are passages of time-tested alliances, courtships and marriages, the back stories of the artists who provided the show’s melodies and lyrics. That, plus plenty of dish about the performers behind Muppets of Sesame Street, and how Jim Henson, decades after his shocking passing in 1990, is a spectral figure quite powerful in spirit.

Laughter and tears – in equal measure – await readers.
 

MICHAEL DAVIS, with over a 50-year career as a writer, editor, educator, and producer, has made good on a lifelong promise to uphold journalism’s sacred values of fairness and accuracy. He is the author of the New York Times Nonfiction Best Seller Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street and was co-executive producer of the Emmy winning documentary adapted from it. 

Cold Open
Act I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Act II
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Act III
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
In Memoriam
Notes

Illustration Credits
Index