By John Belton

This book introduces the reader to basic issues related to the phenomenon of American Cinema. It looks at American Film Industry from the 1890s through th 1990s, but it does not always explore this history in a purely chronological way. In fact, it is not (strictly speaking) a history, which focusses more on topics and issues than on what happened when.

It begins with a profile of classical Hollywood cinema as a unique economic, industrial, aesthetic, and cultural institution. It considers the experience of moviegoing; the nature of Hollywood story-telling: and the roles played by the studio system, the star system, and film genres in the creation of a body of work that functions not only as entertainment but as a portrait of the relationship between an American national identity and an industrialized mass culture that has slowly evolved over the past century.

NY. McGraw Hill. 1994. 396p.

By Sabine Binder

In this ground-breaking study, Sabine Binder analyses the complex ways in which female crime fictional victims, detectives and perpetrators in South African crime fiction resonate with widespread and persistent real crimes against women in post-apartheid South Africa. Drawing on a wide range of crime novels written over the last decade, Binder emphasises the genre’s feminist potential and critically maps its political work at the intersection of gender and race. Her study challenges the perception of crime fiction as a trivial genre and shows how, in South Africa at least, it provides a vibrant platform for social, cultural and ethical debates, exposing violence, misogyny and racism and shedding light on the problematics of law and justice for women faced with crime. Readership: All interested in crime fiction and its gender/racial political potential, its cultural relevance, its ethics and aesthetics, in South Africa and beyond.

Leiden, NETH: Brill. 2020. 252p.

Edited By Mark Fishman and Gray Cavender

From the cover: In eleven original studies by social scientists, this is the first volume to focus on television reality crime programming as a genre. Contributors address such questions as: why do these programs exist; what larger cultural meaning do they have; what effect do they have on audiences; and what do they indicate about crime and justice in the late twentieth century? Adaptable at both undergraduate and graduate levels, Entertaining Crime wil contribute to discussions of crime and the media, as well as crime in relation to other issues, such as gender, race/ethnicity, and fear of crime.

NY. Aldine De Gruyter. 1998. 208p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Gene. D. Phillips

From the Introduction: “….In sum, this book presents an in-depth discussion of several gangster films, some of which are familiar members of the gangster genre, like John: Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle, and some that deserve to be better known, for example, Stephen Frears’s The Grifters. That a few meaningful books on the gangster film have appeared throughout the years demonstrates the continued interest in the genre….in this volume, I include some overlooked crime movies that deserve more attention than they have received. In addition, I have interviewed film directors, as well as other artists and technicians, associated with the films I treat. I also focus on some more recent movies, along with some from the classic period. These later movies are reminders that the gangster genre is still with us and is not going away.

NY. Rowman & Littlefield. 2014. 204p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Fran Mason

From the preface: “The film gangster, therefore, represents a seminal figure in the history of twentieth-century culture, forming the focus for a range of tensions that have dominated the discourses of industrialised society. These range from the role of the individual within an increasingly rationalised society, the impact of urban space (and its association with the fracturing discourses of modernity and postmodernity), the tension between tradition and the modern, the opposition between labour and pleasure, and particularly the relationship between ideology and freedom.

NY. Palgrave Macmillan. 2002. 203p. CONTAINS MARK-UP.