American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film (From 1492 to Three Kings) - Softcover

Trevor McCrisken is lecturer in Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. Andrew Pepper is Lecturer in English and American Literature at Queen's University, Belfast.

This is an accessible, enjoyable study of movies dealing with events from American history ! this study ! deserves a wide readership among students and aficionados of both American history and Hollywood films. The essays are presented in an engaging and ernest style ! the analyses are probing and provocative: models of the kind of creative questioning that leads to fresh insights. A succinct and disciplined book! will undoubtedly find a place in the expanding canon of works on American history and Hollywood film. American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film is a well researched, well argued and generally well written work of scholarship... It brings together for analysis a significant group of Hollywood historical films... Here there is a kind of critical mass that allows the authors to make important suggestions about the treatment of major issues such as gender, race and war in both Hollywood and the larger American culture in the last 15 years. -- Professor Robert Rosenstone, California Institute of Technology 'Scholars who explore the relationship between film and history generally adopt one of two approaches: they write about film on history or they write about history on film. Trevor McCrisken and Andrew Pepper manage to combine the two approaches in a succinct and disciplined book that is intended for a broad audience. The authors deftly manage to present Hollywood dramas as cultural products of their time and simultaneously reflect on how various filmic interpretations of America's past contrbute to shaping and extending the historical record itself! the book will undoubtedly find a place in the expanding canon of works on American history and Hollywood film.' - Australasian Journal of American Studies, December 2006 This is an accessible, enjoyable study of movies dealing with events from American history ! this study ! deserves a wide readership among students and aficionados of both American history and Hollywood films. The essays are presented in an engaging and ernest style ! the analyses are probing and provocative: models of the kind of creative questioning that leads to fresh insights. A succinct and disciplined book! will undoubtedly find a place in the expanding canon of works on American history and Hollywood film. American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film is a well researched, well argued and generally well written work of scholarship... It brings together for analysis a significant group of Hollywood historical films... Here there is a kind of critical mass that allows the authors to make important suggestions about the treatment of major issues such as gender, race and war in both Hollywood and the larger American culture in the last 15 years. 'Scholars who explore the relationship between film and history generally adopt one of two approaches: they write about film on history or they write about history on film. Trevor McCrisken and Andrew Pepper manage to combine the two approaches in a succinct and disciplined book that is intended for a broad audience. The authors deftly manage to present Hollywood dramas as cultural products of their time and simultaneously reflect on how various filmic interpretations of America's past contrbute to shaping and extending the historical record itself! the book will undoubtedly find a place in the expanding canon of works on American history and Hollywood film.' - Australasian Journal of American Studies, December 2006