Reference Reviews

Reference for Students

History in the Media: Film and Television. By Robert Niemi. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC*CLIO, 2006. 1 vol. 500 p. $85.00. ISBN 1-57607-952-X.

A friend tells the tale of Cecil B. DeMille's response to "Why do you keep making Biblical dramas?" which was "Why give up thousands of years of name recognition." In the introduction, the author tells us that over the past 25 years, 13 of the Oscar winners for Best Picture have been movies based in history and the probable success is due to the recognition of the events. The divisions of the book include military history (by eras), sports, music, art, and labor, business and political history. The last two sections cover the history of race relations and the history of crime on film and television. Titles of the more than 350 works are given with their date and then a discussion. These are not synopses of the work, but a treatment of the topic with a discussion of why it was produced, financial considerations, authors and producers plans, and the historical setting for the screenplay. Many are single paragraphs while some are three pages in length. A few black and white photographs illustrate the text. The 12-page bibliography in the appendix will help students do further research. If your school has a film studies class, this will need to be chained to the wall. Social studies and U.S. history teachers will be interested in the possibility of presenting the films described during study of that time period. Students who have done extensive research on the event depicted will be able to help judge the accuracy of the portrayal of events in these films and television programs.