More than thirty years ago, filmmaker George Lucas realized a longtime dream, creating a swashbuckling sf saga inspired by vintage Flash Gordon serials, classic American westerns, the epic cinema of Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa, and mythological heroes. Its original title: The Star Wars. The rest is history - and how it was made is a story as entertaining and exciting as the movie that has enthralled millions for the past three decades. Using his unprecedented access to the Lucasfilm Archives and its trove of never-before-published "lost" interviews, photos, production notes, factoids, and anecdotes, Star Wars scholar J.W.Rinzler hurtles readers back in time for an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the nearly decade-long quest of George Lucas and his key collaborators to make the "little" movie that became a phenomenon. For the first time, it"s all here: the evolution of the now-classic story and characters-including "Annikin Starkiller" and "a huge...