Scholars engaged in the study of film and history have spent more than four decades trying to achieve the right mix of historicism and aestheticism in their analyses of moving-images texts. The perfect blend has been in short supply. Cineastes play to their strengths by focussing on symbolism, camera techniques, and editing – alas, to the detriment of historical analysis; on the other hand, too many historians don their deerstalker caps and function as “fact detectives” who belittle motion pictures for their incorrect chronology, anachronistic mise en scène, inappropriate diction, invented characters, or distortion of historical figures to satisfy a “story arc.”

American History Goes to the Movies: Hollywood and the American Experience by W. Bryan Rommel-Ruiz is a model of film and history studies for a “second generation.” Specific films are given detailed studies in relation to the Civil War, the American West, the assassination of JFK and the tragedy of 9/11. In each case, cinematic productions are placed in the context of contemporary events and existing academic historical models – for example, the question of Civil War films is linked to the “lost cause” views of the 1930s, but also to more conflict-oriented models of the 1960s. Cold War-era immigrant films are shown to reflect Oscar Handlin's consensus views while later versions are interpreted as joining contemporary social historians in stressing alienation and struggle.

The opening chapters look at the “sociological problem of evil” (The Exorcist, 1973; The Crucible, 1996; The Passion, 2004); it is a wide-ranging consideration and displays a broad cross-cultural awareness. Next, the Civil War and Reconstruction section links films with the historiography of their day (The Birth of a Nation, 1914; Gone With the Wind, 1939; television's The Blue and the Gray, 1982; television's North and South, 1985; Gore Vidal's Lincoln, 1988; Cold Mountain, 2003). An expedition into the American West reconsiders the Jeffersonian vision of a last social safety valve (Last of the Mohicans, 1992; The Searchers, 1956; How the West Was Won, 1962; Little Big Man, 1970; Unforgiven, 1992). Later chapters explore how films about the immigrant experience evolve with the historiography of their times (Far and Away, 1992; Gangs of New York, 2002; The Godfather, 1972; My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 2002; Mi Familia, 1995; Real Women Have Curves, 2002). The final chapters assess the “success” with which national traumas have been conceptualized (JFK, 1991; United 93, 2006; The World Trade Center, 2006; W, 2008; Iron Man, 2008).

Rommel-Ruiz stresses throughout that “cinematic history and counter-narrative have emerged as convincing historical narratives to rival ‘official history’” (90). This faith in the power of narrative is also to be found in the work of such eminent scholars as Robert Toplin and Robert Rosenstone; there is insufficient space here to assess the validity of this line of reasoning, but it certainly argues for the legitimacy of using motion pictures in America's classrooms. Indeed, this volume should join library shelves next to Toplin and Rosenstone and adventurous teachers might use it as a classroom text.

American History Goes to the Movies brings into play sources familiar to historians, but, I suspect, terra incognita for cineastes. For me, it was a delight to read his exegesis of the writings of Frederick Jackson Turner, William Dunning, Claude Bowers, Charles Beard, Oscar Handlin, Bernard Bailyn, Mary Beth Norton, and Thomas Sowell; indeed, twenty-one pages of this text focus on historiographical issues of importance to “real” historians, and the Index lists over a hundred references to historical methodology. The author even takes time to analyze the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, the Warren Commission Report, and the 9/11 Commission Report, focussing on both the substance and the methods of those original sources. For those who have hoped to see the burgeoning of a new generation of film and history scholars, these discussions will be like shoots of spring asparagus.

Those with a film or communications background should find here a film and history “mix” that takes them beyond the boundaries of the current film studies curriculum where, alas, the history of the Cold War or the meaning of the Civil War is often derived from secondary sources written by other cineastes unfamiliar with the latest historical paradigms.