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R. J FyneKean University of New Jersey
Founded in 1979, McFarland & Company, located in the picturesque town of Jefferson, North Carolina, has grown into one of the nations leading scholarly and reference book publishers. Year after year, this top-rated company spearheaded by an energetic editorial board promotes new titles in such diverse fields as literature, history, international studies, baseball, the Civil War, library science, women's studies, and, of course, film. With more than 1,100 books in print (out of the 1,600 published), McFarland's performing arts series is well known, both in America and abroad. Its reputation, without question, is gold-plated.
Each year, dozens of McFarland's work--they release approximately 180 titles annually--receive their well-deserved accolades. Recent books, such as William F. O'Neil's The King of Swat, Tadeusz Piotrowski's Poland's Holocaust, and Edward Winter's Capablanca, have picked up awards for academic excellence. Other listings--Sanford Berman's Prejudices and Antipathies, Peter C. Bjarkman's Baseball with a Latin Beat, and Rosemarie Skaine's Power and Gender--are also blue ribbon winners. As for film studies, McFarland really coruscates in this field. Why wouldn't they? All of their selections are first-class research accomplishments. Here is a rundown of recent titles that belong in every academic library.
For starters, Michael S. Shull's excellent study, Radicalism in American Silent Films, 1909-1929: A Filmography and History takes a hard look at Hollywood's portrayal of labor radicals, heartless capitalists, socialist idealists, and warring Bolsheviks during an explosive twenty-year period. This was a time of tremendous upheaval when the incipient film industry, unknowingly, became an influential factor in kneading American culture. With over 100 production companies turning out thousands of feature-length titles and shorts on every conceivable subject, one thing seemed certain. A new media--for better or worse--was altering, influencing, and changing society's perceptions.
Selecting 436 silent films, Dr. Shull examines Hollywood's amorphous portrayal of radical movements both at home and abroad. Early selections such as The Voice of the Violin (1909), The Egg Trust (1910), A Martyr to His Cause (1911), The High Cost of Living (1912), and Bobby's Bum Bomb (1913)--all made before World War I--depicted in one way or another, the unsavory qualities associated with exploitation. Other pictures warned of Russian treachery: The Nihilists (1914), Princess Romanoff (1915), and The Cossack Whip...