E mperor of Nothing: The Making of Larry David might be the most begrudgingly authorised biography ever written. The story of how author Blake J Harris convinced the comedy titan to “tolerate” him begins, of all places, at Fox News.

It was 2020 and Harris’s second book, The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality, had been published the previous year. Palmer Luckey, the Oculus founder, was “fired for being a Trump supporter” and Harris, anything but a Trump fan, simply reported the facts. Speaking on the phone from his home in Colorado, he explains: “My book ended up doing well because I was all over rightwing media, as they loved having me on. I was the liberal journalist who exposed the truth about how conservatives were treated in Silicon Valley.”

Glenn Beck was one of several rightwing commentators who gave Harris a television platform that helped his book to succeed. He even asked if the author would consider writing his biography.…