Here are 100 books that Engaging the Past fans have personally recommended if you like
Engaging the Past.
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I am a film buff and history nerd who has brought her two passions together in the study of history on screen. So much of what we know is shaped by what we watch. It is crucial that we don’t dismiss historical TV shows and films as mere entertainment and instead work to understand how history is constructed and represented on screen. I have spent my postgraduate career exploring the screen’s unique capabilities for telling historical stories. I received my PhD from the University of Auckland and currently teach film studies at Media Design School, Aotearoa’s leading digital creativity tertiary provider.
Robert Rosenstone is thehistory on film guru and a big reason why I chose to pursue this line of research. Reading his work as an undergraduate was incredibly refreshing: not only was his writing was clear and accessible, but the book showed me that there was a different way to approach history. Rosenstone presents the reader with persuasive arguments about the ability of film to do history. His discussion of the films Gloryand Mississippi Burning as examples of true and false invention particularly sparked my interest. Although Rosenstone has written and edited many books on the subject, Visions of the Pastremains my favourite.
Can filmed history measure up to written history? What happens to history when it is recorded in images, rather than words? Can images convey ideas and information that lie beyond words? Taking on these questions, Robert Rosenstone offers a direction in the relationship between history and film. Rosenstone moves beyond traditional approaches, which examine the history of film as art and industry, or view films as texts reflecting their specific cultural contexts. This essay collection makes a venture into the investigation of a concern: how a visual medium, subject to the conventions of drama and fiction, might be used as…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
My eighth-grade teacher refused to believe I had read 12 books for extra credit in a semester or that works by Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Charles Dickens, and Alexandre Dumas were among them. She didn’t know that I had long loved reading, especially stories set in the past of distant lands. In the tenth grade, I declared myself a writer, but only after earning a PhD in history did the hunger to write historical stories become a reality. Much later, I learned that historical films were another wonderful way of encountering history.
I love this book by the late and much-honored Professor of Early Modern European history for its clarity, concision, elegance of expression, and boldness of interpretation.
It focuses on five outstanding films about slavery beginning as early as the 73-71 BC revolt of soldiers against ancient Rome led by the famed gladiator Spartacus and ending with the United States, Cuba, and other Caribbean countries in the late 19th century.
The author even insists, in a chapter on the film made from Toni Morrison’s ghost story novel, Beloved, that it is possible that some written historical fiction can teach us much about the past as traditional scholarly works of history.
The written word and what the eye can see are brought together in this fascinating foray into the depiction of resistance to slavery through the modern medium of film. Davis, whose book The Return of Martin Guerre was written while she served as consultant to the French film of the same name, now tackles the large issue of how the moving picture industry has portrayed slaves in five major motion pictures spanning four generations. The potential of film to narrate the historical past in an effective and meaningful way, with insistence on loyalty to the evidence, is assessed in five…
I am a film buff and history nerd who has brought her two passions together in the study of history on screen. So much of what we know is shaped by what we watch. It is crucial that we don’t dismiss historical TV shows and films as mere entertainment and instead work to understand how history is constructed and represented on screen. I have spent my postgraduate career exploring the screen’s unique capabilities for telling historical stories. I received my PhD from the University of Auckland and currently teach film studies at Media Design School, Aotearoa’s leading digital creativity tertiary provider.
Hughes-Warrington has done an amazing job of creating a history on-film sampler that brings together must-read authors and articles on this subject. The book, published in 2009, introduces readers to the core debates and differing approaches that emerged in the first thirty years of history on film scholarship. The introduction by Hughes-Warrington effectively situates anyone new to the field, providing an engaging overview as well as context for the following chapters. The edited collection features key thinkers such as Robert Rosenstone, Natalie Zemon Davis, Hayden White, Robert Burgoyne, and Marcia Landy.
Historical film studies is a burgeoning field, with a large and ever growing number of publications from across the globe. The History on Film Reader distils this mass of work, offering readers an introduction to just under thirty of the most critical and representative writings on the relationship between film and history. Films discussed include: Gladiator, Forrest Gump, Pan's Labyrinth, Titanic and Life is Beautiful.
Thematically structured, this Reader offers an overview of the varying ways scholars see film as contributing to our understanding of history, from their relationship with written histories, to their particular characteristics and their role in…
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
I am a film buff and history nerd who has brought her two passions together in the study of history on screen. So much of what we know is shaped by what we watch. It is crucial that we don’t dismiss historical TV shows and films as mere entertainment and instead work to understand how history is constructed and represented on screen. I have spent my postgraduate career exploring the screen’s unique capabilities for telling historical stories. I received my PhD from the University of Auckland and currently teach film studies at Media Design School, Aotearoa’s leading digital creativity tertiary provider.
Sets, props, and costumes are not only part of the historical film’s allure but play an important role in the construction of the historical narrative; to ignore this element of screen history is criminal. Sprengler’s book gives “visual pastness” the attention it deserves, delving into the form and function of costumes in Far From Heaven and the cars inSin City (to name just two examples). Sprengler approaches the topic through the lens of nostalgia, adding another layer to the examination of history on screen. As someone who is fascinated by 1950s history and the representation of the 1950s on screen, Sprengler’s focus on this decade is a bonus.
"In this fascinating in-depth study of the impact of nostalgia on contemporary American cinema, Christine Sprengler unpicks the history of the concept and explores its significance in theory and practice. She offers a lucid analysis of the development of nostalgia in American society and culture, navigating a path through the key debates and aligning herself with recent attempts to recuperate its critical potential. This journey opens up the myriad permutations of nostalgia across visual and material culture and their interface with cinema, with the 1950s emerging as a privileged moment. Four case studies (Sin City, Far From Heaven, The Aviator…
My eighth-grade teacher refused to believe I had read 12 books for extra credit in a semester or that works by Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Charles Dickens, and Alexandre Dumas were among them. She didn’t know that I had long loved reading, especially stories set in the past of distant lands. In the tenth grade, I declared myself a writer, but only after earning a PhD in history did the hunger to write historical stories become a reality. Much later, I learned that historical films were another wonderful way of encountering history.
When I first read this book, the only one on my list to deal exclusively with documentary film, I was knocked out by the brilliance of the author in locating, describing, and naming a new genre of historical film, which he calls the Microhistorical. The name is chosen as a parallel to a written genre with the same name that some historians have been writing in the last fifty years.
Such films are unique in both their sources and subject matter. Based almost exclusively on the lives of ordinary people or small forgotten incidents, the sources for such films rely largely on home movies; films never meant to be shown to the public. Remarkably, these microstudies contain important insights into the public’s beliefs about and reactions to the social conditions and movements of the past.
Traditional historical documentaries strive to project a sense of objectivity, producing a top-down view of history that focuses on public events and personalities. In recent decades, in line with historiographical trends advocating "history from below," a different type of historical documentary has emerged, focusing on tightly circumscribed subjects, personal archives, and first-person perspectives. Efren Cuevas categorizes these films as "microhistorical documentaries" and examines how they push cinema's capacity as a producer of historical knowledge in new directions.
Cuevas pinpoints the key features of these documentaries, identifying their parallels with written microhistory: a reduced scale of observation, a central role given…
My eighth-grade teacher refused to believe I had read 12 books for extra credit in a semester or that works by Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Charles Dickens, and Alexandre Dumas were among them. She didn’t know that I had long loved reading, especially stories set in the past of distant lands. In the tenth grade, I declared myself a writer, but only after earning a PhD in history did the hunger to write historical stories become a reality. Much later, I learned that historical films were another wonderful way of encountering history.
I love this book for two special reasons: it was written by a scholar who doubles as a film director and thus understands both media from the inside and it is the first work to elaborate on the meaning of “historiophoty,” a word coined years ago by the famed historian, Hayden White, that means “the representation of history and our thought about it in visual images.”
In clear and compelling prose, Nelson undertakes the enormous task of consolidating several decades of scholarship in diverse fields (history, film, philosophy) to create five principles that allow you and I to think more clearly about the real contributions of historical films. Her work allows you to better understand the explicit and implicit meanings of historical films.
Making History Move: Five Principles of the Historical Film builds upon decades of scholarship investigating history in visual culture by proposing a methodology of five principles to analyze history in moving images in the digital age. It charts a path to understanding the form of history with the most significant impact on public perceptions of the past. The book develops insights across these fields, including philosophical considerations of film and history, to clarify the form and function of history in moving images. It addresses the implications of the historical film on public historical consciousness, presenting criteria to engage and assess…
Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of…
Choosing philosophy at 18 raised a few eyebrows: friends and family thought I was a bit mad and a little lost. Later, when I decided to write philosophical stories and essays, I heard the same refrain: “Most people are afraid of philosophy.” But those voices never swayed me. Deep down, I knew that thinking is a powerful tool for healing, a way to mend what’s broken within us and in the world. Ideas, I believe, can spark change and make the world a better place.
This book is like a forbidden fruit, tempting and dangerous. But it came to my rescue when I’d lost sight of my own dreams for a little while. Sure, Ayn Rand’s philosophy has many simplistic flaws, but in this novel, she channels a Nietzschean spirit that jolts you awake. It was a call to never forget to embrace my ambition and to continue to forge my own writing path even when readers seem indifferent.
In a world full of compromises, there’s power in refusing to settle for less than your own extraordinary potential.
For almost fifty years, we have been chronicling American television, tracking its history, and following its transformation from the era of three networks to the cornucopia of choices now available through streaming. Along the way, we have appreciated and learned much from other TV books that look at the industry from multiple angles. When we started, there were precious few on this topic. Now, there is a surplus. These are the ones we treasure for their well-told stories.
We always felt that Mad Men was one of the true gems of the turn of the millennium. Set during the tumultuous Sixties, it adeptly mirrored the various social, political, and cultural changes that marked that decade. On the surface structured like many TV series “companion” books (detailing the plot and major credits for each individual episode), Seitz’s book goes deeper to explain the underlying messages of each episode.
Even when we recall an episode’s story, reading Seitz’s book is like taking a fascinating course on all things Mad Men. About half of the entries are based on episode reviews Seitz wrote for New York magazine and its Vulture website, while the others are new to this book.
Mad Men Carousel is an episode-by-episode guide to all seven seasons of AMC's Mad Men. This book collects TV and movie critic Matt Zoller Seitz's celebrated Mad Men recaps-as featured on New York magazine's Vulture blog-for the first time, including never-before-published essays on the show's first three seasons. Seitz's writing digs deep into the show's themes, performances, and filmmaking, examining complex and sometimes confounding aspects of the series. The complete series-all seven seasons and ninety-two episodes-is covered.
Each episode review also includes brief explanations of locations, events, consumer products, and scientific advancements that are important to the characters, such as…
I am Associate Professor of Atlantic World Women’s History at the University of Oxford. The history of race, gender, and childbearing is my passion and my profession. The Dobbs decision pissed me TF off and inspired me to write this list. I hope you enjoy these books, and never stop questioning why women’s reproductive lives are controlled so minutely and why their reproductive labour is unpaid and unacknowledged.
It is a sign of our shocking historical amnesia regarding American women’s reproductive lives that this remarkable book is out of print. Leavitt discusses the long history of American women’s childbearing lives, moving from colonial times through the twentieth century and charting along the way women’s loss of control over their reproductive lives as they moved away from births at home, attended by friends and neighbors, and toward birth in hospitals where their freedom of choice was increasingly restricted. To understand the dark side of the ‘twilight sleep’ procedures depicted in The Crown or Mad Men, read Chapter 5 on the growing use, by the early twentieth century, of drugs that rendered women so passive that their babies could be pulled roughly from their bodies with metal instruments.
This is a comprehensive history of women and childbirth in America. Many of the basic changes that have occurred since 1750 resulted from two factors: the replacement of midwives and other female support systems by male doctors in the actual delivery process, and the movement of childbirth from the home to hospitals.
Kimberly Potts is a TV and pop culture journalist and author who believes television is not only the ultimate entertainment medium, but is also the ultimate cultural common denominator. She has written for The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, The Hollywood Reporter, TV Guide, The Los Angeles Times, Yahoo, Variety, People.com, US Weekly, E! Online, Thrillist, Esquire.com, AOL, Movies.com, and The Wrap. Kimberly also co-hosts the Pop Literacyand #Authoring podcasts, and is a member of the Television Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, Authors Guild, and American Society of Journalist and Authors.
The most important aspect of television history is, of course, the shows. And though there have been hundreds, at least, more series that will need to be added to the book since it was published in 2015, it is a gorgeously designed collection of viewing suggestions. And like any great guidebook, it’s also just a fun way for any TV fan to revisit the best series of the past, arranged by decades, and including American and international programming.
The most groundbreaking and important must-see shows from the 1950s to today’s golden age of television. This latest addition to the best-selling and highly acclaimed 1001 series showcases the best programs produced for television from its inception to the bumper crop of great shows being produced in today’s era of original cable programming and digital streaming. Offering a critical evaluation of the most important and groundbreaking TV programs ever created, this book tracks television’s evolution through decades of social, cultural, and stylistic change. Included are shows that broke new ground, influenced the future, and left a lasting mark, ranging from…
