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Film History by Era

Early Cinema

• Abel, Richard. The Red Rooster Scare: Making American Cinema, 1900-1910. Berkeley: University of California, 1999.
• Bengston, John. Silent Echoes: Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Buster Keaton. Santa Monica: Santa Monica Press, 2000.
• Bowser, Eileen. The Transformation of Cinema, 1907-1915. New York: Scribner, 1990.
• Brownlow, Kevin. Behind the Mask of Innocence. New York: Knopf, 1990.
• Butler, Ivan. Silent Magic: Rediscovering the Silent Film Era. New York: Ungar, 1988.
• Corkin, Stanley. Realism and the Birth of the Modern United States: Cinema, Literature, and Culture. Athens: Georgia, 1996.
• Elsaesser, Thomas. Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative. London: BFI, 1990.
• Everson, William K.  American Silent Film.New York: Da Capo Press, 1998.
• Fullerton, John, ed.  Celebrating 1895: The Centenary of Cinema. Sydney: John Libbey & Co., 1998.
• Gunning, Thomas. D.W. Griffith and the Rise of the Narrative Film. Urbana. Illinois, 1991.
• Hansen, Miriam. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. Cambridge: Harvard, 1991.
• Koszarski, Richard. An Evening's Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915-1928. New York: Scribner, 1990.
• Koszarski, Richard. The Rivals of D.W. Griffith. New York: New York Zoetrope, 1980.
• Leyda, Jay and Charles Musser. Before Hollywood. New York: American Federation of the Arts, 1986.
• Maland, Charles J. Chaplin and American Culture. Princeton: Princeton, 1989.
• Musser, Charles. Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company. Berkeley: California, 1991.
• Musser, Charles. The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907. New York: Scribner, 1990.
• Musser, Charles. Thomas A. Edison and His Kinetographic Motion Pictures. New Bruswick: Rutgers, 1995.
• Robinson, David. From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film. New York: Columbia, 1996.
• Ross, Steven J. Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America. Princeton: Princeton University, 1998.
• Slide, Anthony. Early American Cinema. Rev. ed. Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1994.
• Sloan, Kay. The Loud Silents: Origins of the Social Problem Film. Urbana: Illinois, 1988.
• Weiss, Ken. To the Rescue: How Immigrants Saved the American Film Industry, 1896-1912. San Francisco: Austin & Winfield, 1997.

The Depression Era

• Balio, Tino. Grand Design--Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939. New York: Scribner, 1993.
• Bergman, Andrew. We're in the Money: Depression America and Its Films. New York: NYU, 1971.
• Growder, Laura. Rousing the Nation: Radical Culture in Depression America. Amherst: Massachusetts, 1998.
• Maland, Charles. American Visions: The Films of Chaplin, Ford, Capra, and Welles, 1936-1941. New York: Arno, 1977.
• Shindler, Colin. Hollywood in Crisis: Cinema and American Society, 1929-1939. London: Routledge, 1996.

The 1940s

• Basinger, Jeanine. The World War II Combat Film. New York: Columbia, 1986.
• Browder, Laura. Rousing the Nation: Radical Culture in Depression America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1998.
• Dick, Bernard F. The Star-Spangled Screen: The American World War II Film. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985.
• Doherty, Thomas Patrick. Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II. New York: Columbia, 1993.
• Friedrich, Ott. City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940's. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.
• Fyne, Robert. Hollywood Propaganda of World War II. Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1994.
• Honey, Maureen. Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender and Propaganda During World War II. Amherst: Massachusetts, 1984.
• Kane, Kathryn. Visions of War: The Hollywood Combat Films of World War II. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1982.
• Koppes, Clayton R. and Gregory D. Black. Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies. New York: Free Press, 1987.
• Myers, James M.The Bureau of Motion Pictures and Its Influence on Film Content During World War II. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998.
• Schatz, Thomas. Boom and Bust: The American Cinema in the 1940s. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1997.
• Shindler, Colin. Hollywood Goes to War: Films and American Society, 1939-1952. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.

The 1950s

• Biskind, Peter. Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Movies Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties. New York: Pantheon, 1983.
• Brode, Douglas. The Films of the Fifties. New York: Carol, 1992.
• Cochran, David. American Noir: Underground Writers and Filmmakers of the Postwar Era. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.
• Monaco, Paul. Ribbons in Time: Movies and Society Since 1945. Bloomington: Indiana, 1987.
• Quart, Leonard and Albert Auster. American Film and Society Since 1945. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana, 1987.
• Sayre, Nora. Running Time. New York: Dial, 1982.
• Sikov, Ed. Laughing Hysterically: American Screen Comedy of the 1950s. New York: Columbia, 1994.
• Sterritt, David. Mad to be Saved: The Beats, the '50s, and Film. Carbondale: Southern Illinois, 1998.

The 1960s

• Biskind, Peter. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock-'n'-Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.
• James, David E.Allegories of Cinema: American Film in the Sixties. Princeton: Princeton, 1989.
• Man, Glenn. Radical Visions: American Film Renaissance, 1967-1976. Westport: Greenwood, 1994.
• Monaco, Paul. The Sixties, 1960-1969. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2001.
• Mordden, Ethan. Medium Cool: The Movies of the 1960s. New York: Knopf, 1990.

The 1970s

• Bernardoni, James. The New Hollywood: What the Movies Did with the New Freedoms of the Seventies. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1991.
• Cagin, Seth and Philip Dray. Hollywood Films of the Seventies. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.
• Cook, David A. Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970-1979. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2000.
• Lev, Peter. American Films of the ‘70s: Conflicting Visions. Austin: University of Texas, 2000.
• O'Brien, Tom. The Screening of America: Movies and Values from Rocky to Rain Man. New York: Continuum, 1990.
• Wood, Robin. Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan. New York: Columbia, 1986.

The 1980s

• Brode, Douglas. The Films of the Eighties. Secaucus: Carol, 1990.
• Corrigan, Timothy. A Cinema Without Walls: Movies and Culture After Vietnam. New Brunswick, 1991.
• Grunzweig, Walter et al. Constructing the Eighties: Versions of an American Decade. Tubingen: G. Narr, 1992.
• Miller, Mark Crispin. Seeing Through Movies. New York: Panthon, 1990.
• Nowlan, Robert A. The Films of the Eighties: A Complete, Qualitative Filmography. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1991.
• Palmer, William J. Films of the Eighties: A Social History. Carbondale: Southern Illinois, 1993.
• Ryan, Michael and Douglas Kellner. Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood. Bloomington: Indiana, 1988.
• Traube, Elizabeth G. Dreaming Identities: Class, Gender, and Generation in 1980s Hollywood Movies. Boulder: Westview, 1992.
• Vineberg, Steve. No Surprises, Please: Movies in the Reagan Decade. New York: Schirmer Books, 1993.

Contemporary Film

• Bart, Peter. Who Killed Hollywood? Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 1999.
• Biskind, Peter. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock’n’Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.
• Farrell, Kirby. Post-Traumatic Culture: Injury and Interpretation in the Nineties. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1998.
• Jarvis, Brian. Postmodern Cartographies: The Geographical Imagination in Contemporary American Culture. London: Pluto, 1998.
• Lewis, Jon.The New American Cinema. Durham: Duke, 1998.
• Neale, Steve and Murray Smith. Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. London: Routledge, 1998.
• Stokes, Jane C. On Screen Rivals: Cinema and Television in the United States and Britain. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999.
• Wyatt, Justin. High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood. Austin: Texas, 1994.

This site was updated on 07-May-25.