Don's Book & DVD Selections for 2008 

Most of these books are directed at students in our large writing and research classes. Librarians have noticed that students (and many teachers) are more engaged with movies than they are with more traditional texts - not surprising, given the huge impact the mass media has had on our lives. Writing with movies as the text has proved productive in a number of Writing classes eg one class is currently studying "American Beauty" and students are comparing that to other movies such as "Waitress".

Selection for movies is shared with David.

Student audience: Writing, Literature, Media Studies, Community Education, General, Psychology

1.    100 British documentaries / Patrick Russell

2.    A critical cinema : interviews with independent filmmakers / Scott MacDonald

3.    American cinema of the 1930s : themes and variations / edited by Ina Rae Hark

4.    American cinema of the 1940s : themes and variations / edited by Wheeler Winston Dixon

5.    American cinema of the 1950s : themes and variations / edited by Murray Pomerance

6.    American cinema of the 1960s : themes and variations / edited by Barry Keith Grant

7.    American cinema of the 1970s : themes and variations / edited by Lester D. Friedman

8.    American cinema of the 1980s : themes and variations / edited by Stephen Prince

9.    And the best screenplay award goes to-- Sideways, Shakespeare in love, Crash : learning from the winners / Linda Seger

10.    Apocalyptic transformation : apocalypse and the postmodern imagination / Elizabeth K. Rosen

11.    Batman unauthorized : vigilantes, jokers, and heroes in Gotham City / edited by Dennis O'Neil ; with Leah Wilson

12.    British film noir guide / Michael F. Keaney

13.    Celluloid vampires : life after death in the modern world / Stacey Abbott

14.    Christopher Walken A to Z : the man - the movies - the legend / Robert Schnakenberg

15.    Claims to fame : celebrity in contemporary America / Joshua Gamson

16.    Close encounters of the third kind : the making of Steven Spielberg's classic film / Ray Morton

17.    Contemporary Gothic / Catherine Spooner

18.    Cult films : taboo and transgression : a select survey over 9 decades / Allan Havis

19.    Dame Edna Everage and the rise of western civilization : backstage with Barry Humphries / by John Lahr

20.    Dark thoughts : philosophic reflections on cinematic horror / edited by Steven Jay Schneider, Daniel Shaw

21.    David Lynch : beautiful dark / Greg Olson

22.    Directors close up : interviews with directors nominated for best film by the Directors Guild of America / moderated and edited by Jeremy Kagan

23.    Drugs, thugs, and divas : telenovelas and narco-dramas in Latin America / by O. Hugo Benavides

24.    Empire of dreams : the science fiction and fantasy films of Steven Spielberg / Andrew M. Gordon

25.    Faith and choice in the works of Joss Whedon / K. Dale Koontz

26.    Film and comic books / edited by Ian Gordon, Mark Jancovich, Matthew P. McAllister

27.    First cut : conversations with film editors / Gabriella Oldham

28.    For your eyes only : Ian Fleming and James Bond / Ben Macintyre

29.    Gone with the glory : the Civil War in cinema / Brian Steel Wills

30.    Heroes and villains / Mike Alsford

31.    Hollywood divas, indie queens, and TV heroines : contemporary screen images of women / Susanne Kord and Elisabeth Krimmer

32.    Hollywood goes to war : how politics, profits, and propaganda shaped World War II movies / Clayton R. Koppes, Gregory D. Black

33.    Hollywood hybrids : mixing genres in contemporary films / Ira Jaffe

34.    Horror films of the 1980s / John Kenneth Muir

35.    Inside science fiction / James Gunn

36.    Insultingly stupid movie physics : Hollywood's best mistakes, goofs and flat-out destructions of the basic laws of the universe / Tom Rogers

37.    Kitano Takeshi / Aaron Gerow

38.    Long ago and far away : Hollywood and the Second World War / Robert Fyne

39.    Mapping the world of Harry Potter : science fiction and fantasy writers explore the best selling fantasy series of all time / edited by Mercedes Lackey, with Leah Wilson

40.    Martin Scorsese : a biography / Vincent LoBrutto

41.    Monsters in and among us : toward a Gothic criminology / edited by Caroline Joan (Kay) Picart and Cecil Greek

42.    Neo-noir : the new film noir style from Psycho to Collateral / Ronald Schwartz

43.    Perfectly Plum : unauthorized essays on the life, loves, and other disasters of Stephanie Plum, Trenton bounty hunter / edited by Leah Wilson

44.    Pictures at a revolution : five movies and the birth of the new Hollywood / Mark Harris

45.    Queer images : a history of gay and lesbian film in America / Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin

46.    Quentin Tarantino : the man, the myths and his movies / Wensley Clarkson

47.    Scorsese up close : a study of the films / Ben Nyce

48.    Silent lives : 100 biographies of the silent film era / by Lon Davis

49.    Sinascape : contemporary Chinese cinema / Gary G. Xu

50.    Sith, slayers, stargates & cyborgs : modern mythology in the new millennium / edited by David Whitt + John Perlich

51.    Star Trek and philosophy : the wrath of Kant / edited by Jason T. Eberl and Kevin S. Decker

52.    Stardom and celebrity : a reader / [edited by] Sean Redmond and Su Holmes

53.    Superheroes! : capes and crusaders in comics and films / Roz Kaveney

54.    Superman on film, television, radio, and broadway / Bruce Scivally

55.    The cult film reader / edited by Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendick

56.    The Da Vinci mole : [a philosophical parody] / Ian Browne

57.    The films of Sergio Leone / Robert C. Cumbow

58.    The films of Steven Spielberg : critical essays / edited by Charles L.P. Silet

59.    The films of Woody Allen : critical essays / edited by Charles L.P. Silet

60.    The first Hollywood : Florida and the golden age of silent filmmaking / Shawn C. Bean

61.    The Frodo franchise : the Lord of the rings and modern Hollywood / Kristin Thompson

62.    The literature/film reader : issues of adaptation / edited by James M. Welsh, Peter Lev

63.    The many faces of Sacha Baron Cohen : politics, parody, and the battle over Borat / Robert A. Saunders

64.    The monster hunter in modern popular culture / Heather L. Duda

65.    The Pixar touch : the making of a company / David A. Price

66.    The politics of force : media and the construction of police brutality / Regina G. Lawrence

67.    The psychology of Harry Potter : an unauthorized examination of the boy who lived / edited by Neil Mulholland

68.    The psychology of superheroes : an unauthorized exploration / edited by Robin S. Rosenberg ; with Jennifer Canzoneri

69.    The Rough Guide to film / Richard Armstrong ... [et al.]

70.    The science of Dune : unauthorized exploration into the real science behind Frank Herbert's fictional universe ed. by Kevin R. Grazier

71.    The science of Michael Crichton : an unauthorized exploration into the real science behind the fictional worlds of Michael Crichton ed. by Kevin R. Grazier

72.    The screenwriting formula : why it works and how to use it / Rob Tobin

73.    The unauthorized X-men : SF and comic writers on mutants, prejudice, and adamantium / edited by Len Wein with Leah Wilson

74.    'Then it was destroyed by the volcano' : the ancient world in film and on television / Arthur J. Pomeroy

75.    This is chick-lit / edited by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

76.    Watching the Lord of the rings : Tolkien's world audiences / Martin Barker & Ernest Mathijs, editors

77.    Webslinger : unauthorized essays on your friendly neighborhood Spider-man / edited by Gerry Conway with Leah Wilson

78.    Why did it have to be snakes? : from science to the supernatural, the many mysteries of Indiana Jones / Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg

79.    Zombie culture : autopsies of the living dead / edited by Shawn McIntosh, Marc Leverette