Columbia Books

If you want to find out what a tremendous event was all about--famine, pestilence, war--read the poems written about it. Ever since Homer, or the book of Judges, war poems have been written to tell us what happened, to whom, why. Richard Marius's fine selection, with his introduction to it, opens today's reader to the Civil War's horror, pathos, loss, and the emotions which are easy to forget, or worse still, to romanticize. It's a broad selection, from "John Brown's Body" and "Dixie" to today's meditations, in Derek Walcott's "Arkansas Testament," on the legacy of hostility toward blacks, North and South: the Civil War, to Walcott, is still to be won. Meanwhile a selection of photographs brings those terrible four years even closer. Even at a remove of 140 years, this collection of poems allows us to be moved by them and the passions which still haunt all of us.

This book was woth every cent I paid for it. Does not get any better. If you want a checklist for Columbia movies you will be very happy with this book.

This year by year chronology of news, music, books, and people is fun to read. Pick your high school years to find out what happened to form the you of today. Need to know the top tune of 1951 to jazz up a scene in your novel? This book has that, and many more facts to keep one's dialogue in the right era.

The original 1986 publication is now available in a popular-priced, handy paperback edition. Many movie fans are familiar with the Columbia comedy shorts of The Three Stooges, but many of Hollywood's most popular comedians (Buster Keaton, Charley Chase, Andy Clyde, Harry Langdon, etc.) also appeared in Columbia's two-reel comedies. The studio's quarter-century of short-subject production is accurately and completely chronicled by the authors. Their scholarship is exemplary, especially in the filmographies. The writing is intelligent and absorbing, and there are dozens of rare photographs. The book can be enjoyed and consulted any number of times.

The purpose of this book is to supply a perspective on the following: how films belong to the eras in which they are made;
how films reflect the times as historical documents; how sponsors use motion pictures and television to influence history or our understanding of the past.

Close attention is devoted to the existing historical wisdom on a topic, drawing from the work of historians and other social scientists; the pertinent films on the subject are then tested in relation to the historiography of the time in which they were made as well as in relation to our understanding of the issues, today. All of this work is done without an axe to grind or a theory to vindicate.

This book should be near the desk of every history teacher from the high schools to universities. Because our understanding of the past is so intertwined with the media record, we need all the help we can get to untangle the facts from the fictions--or, at least to discern the differences in interpretations.

The book emerges from the work of a journal called "Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies," a publication which has been active since 1970 and is an affiliated society of the American Historical Association. The journal provides a continuing interest in these issues and should also be a resource at schools. Biennial meetings offer a great opportunity for teachers to experience the work of those committed to such studies. A compendium of such information is available at www.filmandhistory.org.

Above all else the movies have to entertain. When they make movies about historical events, sometimes the movies are able to do an adequate, truthful story about what happened. At other times the story gets so 'Hollywooded' that any representation to the original event is purely coincidental. Sometimes there's a meeting point inbetween that you'd never guess.

Example: in 'The Flying Tigers,' there's a love story intermixed with the fighting. A nurse that was with them was asked if there was any truth to this at all. She replied, well, I was over there, there was this very good looking pilot. Why shouldn't there be relationships between young adults inbetween the fighting.

Another good example is the difference between the two 'Memphis Belle' movies. The 1944 documentary was dramatic as well as exciting. The 1990 version was so 'Hollywood' as to be silly.

This book breaks down American history into subject areas such as Eras, Wars, Notable People, Crime and the Mafia, Baseball, and many more. In each of these sections the book discusses the major films that apply.

If you are predisposed to reading European authors who graced the literary community between the 1880s-1970s, I am aware of no better single-volume reference book in English than the 'Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature.'

In addition to providing a scholarly synopsis of the history of all the major literary movements for many of the continental European countries (plus Turkey), it also has a rounded profile and bibliography for a daunting number of exceptional European authors of that period.

A vital addition to one's library!

This book explores the central developments in African American history since 1939.

The first part (about 90 pages) provides a concise and compelling historical narrative broken into five time periods. It begins with a discussion of the various approaches to interpreting black history post-1939, including revisionist, vindicationist, Afrocentric, integrationist, nationalist and multidimensional approaches. The authors take a multidimensional approach, demonstrating that "The Movement" was/is not a united front, but rather a struggle waged on many different fronts in different ways with different objectives - sometimes at cross purposes. Also, things which seemed like progress at the time (e.g. school desegregation) are now being reexamined.

The second part examines seven "key themes" including business, music, military service, sports, and literature, plus the answer to a question which has cropped up numerous times on my listservs lately: why and when did we become Negro/black/African American, who prefers which term, and why is self-designation important?

The third part provides a chronology, the fourth A-Z entries with a paragraph or two about key persons and organizations.

The final section (about 70 pages) is a substantial Resource Guide to textbooks, general references, military records, manuscript collections, film, video and recordings, and more. The various bibliographies are annotated, but the listings of Libraries/Museums/Historical Sites, Newspapers/Periodicals/Journals, and Web Sites are not, and that's the only weakness I found here. (Note: I have an extensive annotated listing of libraries/museums/historical sites by state at AfroAmericanHeritage dot com.)

This book belongs on every library shelf - public, academic and high school. For general readers, it provides a clear and compelling introduction to a complex era. For students and instructors, it provides a valuable framework and many tools for further exploration and research. I'm sure it will spark many people to dig deeper and for that, I highly recommend it.

Aging baby-boomers like myself can rest more easily; herein one discovers a wonderful effort, which succeeds marvelously in accurately and faithfully recounting and retelling the somewhat convoluted and always multi-currented tenor of the times for the 1960s. Given the massive neo-conservative effort to discredit the theoretical positions and social ethos of the sixties generation, it is terrific to have such a carefully researched and meticulously documented effort as is "The Columbia Guide To America In The 1960s" to give greater voice and renewed verve and credibility to the ideas and theoretical positions that arose from the ongoing new-left critique of mainstream society that emanated from the events of that storied decade. Authors David Farber and Beth Bailey are both academics with considerable expertise in the area of contemporary 20th century history, and this aplomb with the facts and the sense of the times is fascinating to plow through on both an intellectual and also an emotional level. This is scholarship well done!

It does one well to remember that the sixties decade and what came out of it are both subjects of serious disagreements as well as continuing controversy, given the attempt by the right wing to define the ideas stemming from those times as bogus and discredited. Therefore, making sense of all that is brought back to the surface in this book represents a considerable effort, but it is hard to deny such an effort to make sense of a time with so many crosscurrents and so much social, cultural, and political turbulence is well worth the effort. Therefore, the book is organized around several different perspectives and approaches. In the first section, we are presented with a well-developed and intricately organized narrative that superbly covers the waterfront of the era's most significant events, policies, and changes. The second part of the book is organized around ten different essay efforts by well-regarded contemporary historians on various salient aspects of the decade, ranging from the counterculture, the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, and of course, the war in Vietnam.

The net effect of the combined first and second sections is to give us a much more comprehensive and detailed understanding of both the issues and events on the one hand, and how they fit into the mosaic of the sixties, on the other hand. Subsequent section also add to the overall contribution of the book, by giving us shorter essays on other aspects of the era, subjects of particualr interest to each of the authors, and a terrific extended bibliography for those of us interested in further exploring the eddies and currents of various aspects of the decade in question. It fairly well smashes revisionist interpretations of the era into smithereens by exposing them for the solipsistic efforts at refashioning the truth that they are, and does so while educating and entertaining us on an number of levels at one. This is a great book, and one I can recommend to anyone interested in learning more about the most fascinating decade of the 20th century. Enjoy!

How have Americans transformed their environment, and how have political systems handled conflicts over resources and conservation issues over the decades? Columbia Guide To American Environmental History is the only major reference to explore these themes, and deserves a place on the shelf of any college-level library with a strong collection in environmental issues and political intervention.