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1) The Columbia companion to American history on film: how the movies have portrayed the American past
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American history has always been an irresistible source of inspiration for filmmakers, and today, for good or ill, most Americans sense of the past likely comes more from Hollywood than from the works of historians. In important films such as The Birth of a Nation (1915), -Roots (1977), Apocalypse Now (1979), and -Saving Private Ryan (1998), how much is entertainment and how much is rooted in historical fact? In The Columbia Companion to American...
2) Causes won, lost, and forgotten: how Hollywood & popular art shape what we know about the Civil War
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More than 60,000 books have been published on the Civil War. Most Americans, though, get their ideas about the war--why it was fought, what was won, what was lost--not from books but from movies, television, and other popular media. In an engaging and accessible survey, Gary W. Gallagher guides readers through the stories told in recent film and art, showing how these stories have both reflected and influenced the political, social, and racial currents...
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"There is no shortage of Hollywood films about historical events, but what do the movies actually get right, and why do they get so much wrong? Hollywood loves a story: good guys versus bad guys, heroes winning the day, and the guy gets the girl. But we all know real life isn't exactly like that, and this is even more true when we look at history. Rarely do the just prevail and the three-act story cannot exist over continents and decades of human...
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"From ancient Egypt to the Tudors to the Nazis, the film industry has often defined how we think of the past. But how much of what you see on the screen is true? And does it really matter if filmmakers just make it all up? Picking her way through Hollywood's version of events, acclaimed historian Alex von Tunzelmann sorts the fact from the fiction. Along the way, we meet all our favorite historical characters, on screen and in real life: from Cleopatra...
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Short cuts volume 39
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"With its unparalleled capacity for realism, cinema seems uniquely positioned to bring history to life for a mass audience. Whether retelling stories about past events or reflecting more contemporary issues, cinema has been arguably the primary source of historical knowledge for many people from its earliest years right up to the present. This volume examines some of the key historical issues raised by popular film, including what film might tell...