Everything I Need To Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone: A Fifth-Dimension Guide to Life

In the early 1960s, Rod Serling's Twilight Zone television program was de rigueur viewing. Serling introduced each show and wrote 92 of the 156 episodes that ran from 1959 to 1964. Part sf, part horror, with famous actors of the day starring, according to veteran TV critic (Cleveland Plain Dealer), author (The Columbo Phile; The Night Stalker Companion), and member of Rod Serling Books' editorial board Dawidziak, the show was also a series of morality plays that could serve as guides to life. Although the author includes descriptions of most episodes, he states that this is not a program guide nor a history of the show but rather a lighthearted self-help book, in which each episode is linked to an old saying. For example, Walter Bedeker (David Wayne) sells his soul to the devil in "Escape Clause." Lesson? "Read every contract…carefully." While his title pays homage to Robert Fulgham's 1988 best seller All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Dawidziak considers this book a step up, calling it "postgraduate work."