Film & History Books Recommended

History of the American Cinema series:

Musser, Charles. The Emergence of Cinema: the American screen to 1907. New York: Scribner, 1990. 613 p. : ill. ; 26 cm. Series: History of the American cinema ; v. 1. Includes bibliographical references (p. [529]-544) and indexes.
Bowser , Eileen. The Transformation of Cinema, 1907-1915, vol. 2 of The History of the American Cinema. New York: Scribner, 1990. 337 p. : ill. ; 26 cm. Series: History of the American cinema ; v. 2. Includes bibliographical references (p. [295]-300) and indexes.
Koszarski, Richard. An Evening's Entertainment: the age of the silent feature picture, 1915-1928. New York: Scribner, 1990. 395 p. : ill. ; 27 cm. Series: History of the American cinema ; v. 3. Includes bibliographical references (p. [355]-363) and indexes.
Crafton, Donald. The Talkies: American cinema's transition to sound, 1926-1931. New York: Scribner, 1997. 639 p. : ill. ; 26 cm. Series: History of the American cinema ; v. 4. Includes bibliographical references (p. [603]-609) and indexes.
Balio, Tino. Grand Design--Hollywood as a modern business enterprise, 1930-1939. New York: Scribner, 1993. 483 p. : ill. ; 26 cm. Series: History of the American cinema ; v. 5. Includes bibliographical references (p. 414-448) and indexes.
Schatz, Thomas. Boom and Bust: the American Cinema in the 1940s. New York: Scribner's, 1997. 571 p. : ill. ; 26 cm. Series History of the American cinema ; v. 6. Includes bibliographical references (p. 527-533) and indexes.
Monaco, Paul. The Sixties, 1960-1969. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001. 346 p. : ill. ; 26 cm. Series History of the American cinema ; v. 8. Includes bibliographical references (p. 313-319) and index.
Cook, David A. Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970-1979. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 2000. 695 p. : ill. ; 26 cm. Series History of the American cinema ; v. 9. Includes bibliographical references (p. 561-594) and index.
Prince, Stephen. A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood under the Electronic Rainbow, 1980-1989. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 2000. 564 p. : ill. ; 26 cm. Series History of the American cinema ; v. 10. Includes bibliographical references (p. 477-487) and indexes.

Textbooks:

Ellis, Jack C. and Virginia Wright Wexman. A History of Film. 5th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2002. 488 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. Includes filmographies, bibliographical references, and index.
Giannetti, Louis D. and Scott Eyman. Flashback: a brief history of film. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001. 614 p. ; 24 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Gomery, Douglas. Movie History: a Survey. Belmont, Calif. : Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1991. 510 p., [4] p. of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 23 cm. (Wadsworth Series in Television and Film). Includes bibliographical references (p. 442-468) and index. Filmography: p. 469-490.
Salt, Barry. Film Style and Technology : history and analysis. 2nd ed. London : Starword, 1992. 351 p. : ill. ; 28 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. [317]-319) and indexes.
Thompson, Kristin and David Bordwell. Film History: an introduction. 2nd ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003. 788 p., [24] p. of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 28 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. 725-731) and index.

Recommended:

Bergman, Andrew. We're In the Money. Depression America and Its Films. New York, Harper & Row, 1971. 200 p. illus. Includes bibliography. Originally presented as the author's thesis, University of Wisconsin.
Biskind, Peter. Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties. New York : Pantheon Books, 1983. 371 p. : ill. ; Includes bibliographical references and index.
Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Blacks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Film. 3rd ed. New York: Continuum, 1973, 1994 paperback edition. 390 p.: ill.; index.
Brady, Frank. Citizen Welles: a Biography of Orson Welles. New York : Scribner, 1989. 655 p., [24] p. of plates : ill. ; Note Includes Bibliography: p. 621-626 and index.
Carnes, Mark C., ed. Past Imperfect: History according to the Movies. NY: Holt, 1995. 304 p.: ill.; bibliographical references and index. collection of essays that examine over 100 films.
Cripps, Thomas. Slow fade to Black: the Negro in American Film, 1900-1942. New York : Oxford University Press, 1977. 447 p.: ill.; Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Fielding, Raymond. The American Newsreel, 1911-1967. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972. 392 p. illus. Bibliography: p. 351-375.
Gabler, Neal. Empire of their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. New York: Crown Publishers, 1988. 502 p., [24] p. of plates : ill. ; Includes index and Bibliography: p. 482-487.
Gomery, Douglas. Shared Pleasures: a History of Movie Presentation in the United States. Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. 381 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. Series Wisconsin studies in film. Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-375) and index. Jowett, Garth. Film: the Democratic Art. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976. 518 p. ; The American Film Institute series; Includes bibliography: p. 487-505 and index.
Hoberman, J. The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties. New York : New Press, 2003. 461 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. [410]-433) and index.
Kendall, Elizabeth. Runaway Bride: Hollywood's Romantic Comedies of the 1930s. New York: Knopf, 1990. 285 p.: ill.; bibliographical references (p. [273]-274) and index.
Kolker, Robert Phillip. A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Stone, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 484 p., [24] p. of plates : ill. ; Includes filmography: p. [421]-464 and bibliographical references (p. [407]-419) and index.
Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler: a psychological history of the German film. Revised and expanded edition, edited and introduced by Leonardo Quaresima. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. 348 p., [32] p. of plates : ill. ; First published 1947. Includes bibliographical references (p. 315-332) and indexes.
May, Lary. Screening out the Past: the birth of mass culture and the motion picture industry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. 304 p. : ill. ; Includes bibliographical references and index. about the history of silent film.
Rollins, Peter, ed. The Columbia Companion to American History on Film: how the movies have portrayed the American past. New York : Columbia University Press, 2003. 671 p. : ill. ; Includes bibliographical references and index Includes filmographies.
Schickel, Richard. The Disney Version: the Life, Times, Art, and Commerce of Walt Disney. 3rd ed. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1997. 384 p.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 367-374) and index.
Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in 20th-Century America. NY: Atheneum, 1992. 850 p.
Suid, Lawrence H. Guts & Glory: the making of the American military image in film. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002. 748 p. : ill. ; Revised and expanded edition of: Addison-Wesley, 1978. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Taves, Brian. The Romance of Adventure: The Genre of Historical Adventure Movies. Univ. of Mississippi, 1994. 267 p., illus.
Williamson, J. W. Hillbillyland: what the movies did to the mountains and what the mountains did to the movies. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1995. 325 p.

revised 6/21/04 by Schoenherr | Film Books | Film Notes