2026 Tournament of Books Matchup: 'The Catch' vs. 'The Director'
The Tournament of Books, brought to you by the same fine folks behind The Morning News newsletter (with a big assist from everybody's favorite pocket notebook brand, Field Notes) is one of my favorite traditions.
It's such a simple concept: A March Madness-style bracket of books, where each pairing gets a particular reader who decides the fate of which book advances through these short compare-and-contrast reviews. Another treat is the layer of meta-commentary that operates like play-by-play announcers describing what they saw and experienced in reading the same books. Everything about it is highly subjective, but it works because everyone has agreed to the rules.
I know this event comes around every March, and while I was ahead of the curve initially, I quickly fell behind in keeping up with it. I first tuned in yesterday, and the matchup just happened to be one that I was invested in by sheer fact that I'd read one of the books and loved it.
The Director was one of the much-hyped books of 2025, and it did not disappoint. It's a complicated book in some respects, remarkably simple in others. The gist of it is this: A successful German filmmaker makes his way to Hollywood, only to find Tinseltown is a morass of producer notes and stifled creativity. He returns home to move his aged mother into a nursing home, but while he's there, wouldn't you know a little thing called World War II pops off. He's stuck, and before long, he's presented the option to make films, with all the resources he could want and all the freedom he was sorely missing in America. The only catch? The films would be for the Reich. He wouldn't be forced to make fawning propaganda films; he would be trusted and respected as the world-class artist he is. But, of course, the very success and artistry of his films would serve as propaganda for Hitler's cause. It was inescapable.
It was a fantastic book, and one for which I probably have a longer, deeper essay in me somewhere. But for now, I was happy to be reminded of it, through the ToB.
I wasn't familiar with its competition, one I'll consider the underdog of the matchup, so I was rapt with anticipation to find out the outcome.
Find out who won, catch up on the rest of the tournament so far, and bask in a ridiculously good idea well executed.
Andrew Womack
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