A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 2010 Alfred A. Knopf On September 21, 2010, New York-based Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of publishing giant Penguin Random House,  released Baseball: An Illustrated History, the updated edition of a 1994 book co-written by historian Geoffrey C. Ward and documentarian Ken Burns as a literary companion to Burns' nine-part documentary series Baseball . The new edition was published to coincide with the fall broadcast of   Baseball: The Tenth Inning: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick, the first of several planned sequels to Burns' second entry in the American Trilogy, which began with 1990's  The Civil War and concluded with 2001's Jazz. As a result, the 2010 edition includes a new chapter by author Kevin Baker ( America: The History of Us,   Sometimes You See It Coming, the City of Fire trilogy). Baseball: An Illustrated History follows the format of other companion volumes written either by Ward alone ( The West: An Illustrated History ) or with his long-time c

© 2006 A&E Home Video  In 2006, back when A&E Networks'  History was still called The History Channel and occasionally broke from its increasingly lowbrow programming to air actual historically-derived content, it presented The Revolution , a 13-part documentary about the 26-year-long effort of the 13 American colonies to achieve independence from Great Britain and the birth of a new nation in the Western Hemisphere. Written by the miniseries' primary director, Alexander Emmert and Stephen Stept, The Revolution uses a blend of live-action re-enactments, illustrations, and documents from the period, animated battle maps, talking-head commentary by historians and military experts, and dramatic voice-overs to tell the complex and fascinating story of the creation of the United States. Co-directed by Emmert with executive producer and co-writer Peter Schnall (who also did many of the production-related tasks), The Revolution (also known as The American Revolution ) co

Goodness gracious,  no. The Walt Disney Company bought Lucasfilm Ltd., its intellectual properties (not just the  Star Wars  franchise), and all of the rights thereof from George Lucas over six years ago. Lucas chose Disney instead of, say, Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox or Paramount because he had collaborated with the House of Mouse on various projects before, including theme park attractions such as  Star Tours, The Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular,  and Michael Jackson’s  Captain Eo  film . And regardless of what a loud and vocal subgroup of fans tends to believe, other than maybe releasing too many  Star Wars  movies in a relatively short time, I don’t think that Lucasfilm, under the Disney aegis, has done as badly as those “Disney bashers” claim. So…Disney is not looking to sell either  Star Wars  or Lucasfilm, so even if some fans can “pool money together to buy the  Star Wars  rights from Disney,” they can’t force Bob Iger to sell. Furthermore, the phrase “buy back

On November 23, 2012, the 300 member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired  The Central Park Five: A Film by Ken Burns & David McMahon & Sarah Burns, a two-hour-long documentary about the five teenaged black and Latino boys who were arrested and coerced into "confessions" by overzealous New York City detectives and prosecutors in the infamous 1989 "Central Park jogger case." Co-written and directed by documentarian Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah, and producer/director David McMahon, The Central Park Five is a searing and often infuriating case study of racial prejudice, sloppy police work, wrongful prosecution, and the role of mass media in perpetuating a miscarriage of justice. The film, which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival several months before it aired on PBS, tells the story of the long ordeal experienced by New York City teens Anton McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Kevin Wise, and Yusuf Salaam after a

Dear Senator McConnell, I'm not one of your constituents; I live in Florida, which like your home state of Kentucky is a Republican-controlled state. I'm also not Republican; I used to be an independent until recently. Now I'm a Democratic Party member, although I am always open to voting for Republicans if candidates merit it. I know that you are probably going to ignore me for the reasons I listed above. But I'm a loyal and patriotic American citizen, born and raised in the USA. My parents were legal immigrants; I found my late mom's old INS paperwork and her 1996 certificate of citizenship. You, sir, are the Senate Majority Leader. So please, hear me out. We, Democrats, are willing to vote for more money for border security if it is spent wisely on more personnel and surveillance drones. We do NOT, as you often claim, want "open borders." Immigrants do need to be vetted and, if necessary, sent back to their country of origin. What we DON&

© 2018 Oxford University Press On May 2, 2018, the New York-based North American division of Oxford University Press published World War II at Sea: A Global History by Craig L. Symonds. As the title implies, Symonds' nearly 800-page book is a one-volume account of the naval battles that took place during the Second World War from the beginning of the war in Europe on September 1, 1939, to Japan's surrender (fittingly) aboard the battleship USS Missouri six years later. Written by a renowned naval historian and Professor Emeritus and former history department chair at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD,  World War II at Sea: A Global History tells the story of history's largest clash of arms from the perspectives of the Axis and Allied navies, the admirals that led them, and the officers, sailors, Marines, and airmen that fought - and often died - in such diverse places as the River Plate, the Denmark Strait, Cape Matapan, the Coral Sea, Midway, the North Cape, Savo

On November 23, 1997, the 300 member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired The Reluctant Revolutionaries, the first episode of Liberty! The American Revolution, a six-part miniseries about the American Revolutionary War (1775-1781) and the birth of the United States of America. Written by Ronald Blumer ( The U.S. Constitution, Benjamin Franklin ) and co-directed by Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer ( Benjamin Franklin ), Liberty! is an earnest if a somewhat superficial attempt to explore America's War of Independence, its root causes. and its long-lasting impact on American, British, and world history. Featuring an all-star cast of Hollywood and Broadway stars (some of whom were just starting out) and a team of American and British historians, including Pauline Maier, Ron Hoffman, Gordon S. Wood, Richard Norton Smith, John Keegan, Jeremy Black, and Nicholas A.M. Rodger, the miniseries portrays the tumultuous 25-year period between 1763 and 1788 through a mix of li