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BIG SCREEN: THE STORY OF THE MOVIES
THOMSON, DAVID
Skylight Books – Hotlist Fall 2012
The Big Screen is not another history of the movies. Rather, it is a wide-ranging narrative about the movies and
their signal role in modern life. At first, film was a waking dream, the gift of appearance delivered for a nickel to
huddled masses sitting in the dark. But soon, and abruptly, movies began transforming our society and our
perception of the world. David Thomson takes us around the globe, through time, and across many media—
moving from Eadweard Muybridge to Steve Jobs, from Sunrise to I Love Lucy, from John Wayne to George
Clooney, from television commercials to picture bytes on the Internet—to tell the complex, gripping, paradoxical
story of the movies. He tracks the ways in which we were initially enchanted by this mesmerizing imitation of life
and let movies—the stories, the stars, the look—show us how to live. But at the same time, movies, offering a
seductive escape from everyday reality and its responsibilities, have made it possible for us to evade life
altogether. The entranced audience has become a model for powerless and anxietyridden citizens trying to
pursue happiness and dodge terror by sitting quietly in a dark room.
FILM HISTORY 1ST PRINTING 40,000
FARRAR STRAUS & GIROUX 528 PAGES
9780374191894
$38.50 HC
OCTOBER 2012
THE BLACK COUNT
REISS, TOM
His swashbuckling exploits appear in "The Three Musketeers," and his triumphs and ultimate tragic fate inspired
"The Count of Monte Cristo." His name is Alex Dumas. Father of the novelist Alexandre Dumas, Alex has
become, through his son's books, "the" model for a captivating modern protagonist: the wronged man in search
of justice. Born to a black slave mother and a fugitive white French nobleman in Saint-Domingue (present-day
Haiti), Alex Dumas was briefly sold into bondage but then made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a
sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy. He was only 32 when he was given command of 53,000 men,
the reward for series of triumphs that many regarded as impossible, and then topped his previous feats by
leading a raid up a frozen cliff face that secured the Alps for France. It was after his subsequent heroic service
as Napoleon's cavalry commander that Dumas was captured and cast into a dungeon--and a harrowing ordeal
commenced that inspired one of the world's classic works of fiction.
BIOGRAPHY 1ST PRINTING 100,000
CROWN 432 PAGES
9780307382467
$29.95 HC
SEPTEMBER 2012
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