



By 1978, she’d locked down the rights to James Michener’s Centennial, recruited Natalie Wood for a six-part adaptation of From Here to Eternity, and picked up James Clavell’s Shogun for a lavish production destined to become a ratings sensation in 1980. In the back half of the 1970s, when miniseries adaptations like Rich Man, Poor Man and Roots became runaway hits, a great book could make or break a TV career-so the influential NBC producer Deanne Barkley scooped up as many great books as she could.
