Paperback(1st ed. 2001)
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Overview
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781349631100 |
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Publisher: | Palgrave Macmillan US |
Publication date: | 02/18/2002 |
Edition description: | 1st ed. 2001 |
Pages: | 268 |
Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Rebirth of a Nation: Reframing The Civil War (1990) on Prime Time Television Life Lessons: Learning the Basics on Brooklyn Bridge (1982) Variations on a Theme: American Originals, Symbols, and Institutions Inside the Production Process on Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1992): The Creative Team as Historian A Whole New Ballgame: Baseball (1994) and The West (1996) as Event TV American Lives: Thomas Jefferson (1997) and the Television Biography as Popular History Mainstreaming Jazz (2001) for a National Audience: Ken Burns's America Reconsidered Notes VideographyWhat People are Saying About This
Gary Edgerton has created an outstanding study of the man who re-invented public television -- Ken Burns. If Sesame Street defined PBS for the 1980s, then The Civil War, Baseball and Jazz did the same during the final decade of the 20th century. While one might disagree with Burns' interpretations of what has made the United States special, no one can argue that he has put his stamp on popular history as no one has in the age of television. Gary Edgerton places PBS's non-fiction ace under the microscope, and in a highly readable style, astonished me as I rediscovered one documentarian I surely thought I knew. While Edgerton carefully takes apart the recognizable and distinctive Burns' TV style, he more importantly explains why and how Ken Burns became the most honored popular historian working today.
Douglas Gomery, Professor of Media History at the University of Maryland
If the 1950s marked the first golden age of television documentary, Ken Burns surely made the end of the century the second. Gary Edgerton's well-written study tells us how and why. Edgerton probes behind the famous films to show us the man and his process for assembling the popular historical narratives that have almost single handedly resurrected the once-dying video documentary genre. From his early films through the break-through Civil War series and on to the recent history of Jazz, Ken Burns's documentaries have informed a generation of Americans. Now Gary Edgerton provides an informed and readable guide to the development of Burns's methods and explores the reasons for his spectacular success. Edgerton combines critical viewing, a host of well-chosen interviews, and careful analysis to provide the best picture we have of one of the most important American documentary filmmakers. Thanks to Gary Edgerton's effort, we have a balanced view of the modern documentary maker in action. This is an important and insightful study of today's most important American television documentary maker.
Christopher H. Sterling, George Washington University, editor of Communication Booknotes Quarterly
Gary Edgerton offers us an engaging account of a master storyteller who reminds us through his life's work that the ultimate master is narrative. In this anatomy of a popular storyteller we find 'an able if self-taught historian' . . . whose twin obsessions of filmmaking and history have transformed him into 'the people's historian.' Our new history texts can be found on television because, as Gary Edgerton informs us, Ken Burns has found an honored place on television for historical documentaries.
Michael T. Marsden, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Research, Eastern Kentucky University
Like the films it analyzes,Ken Burns's America is creatively structured, carefully and thoroughly researched, and presented in accessible, lively prose full of the voices of its central subjects. Gary Edgerton operates as a contemporary cultural historian in offering a compelling and extremely useful analysis of the unprecedented popularity and influence of the Burns documentaries and their role in shaping national understandings of the American past.
Carolyn Anderson, Associate Professor, Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts
Who is the most influential historian in America today? Gary Edgerton deftly makes the case that Ken Burns has leapt over the academics to claim that spot. An enthusiastic, idealistic young filmmaker with an eye for old photographs and a nose for compelling historical narratives, Burns burst on the public broadcasting scene in 1990 with his blockbuster television series The Civil War. Popular history - on TV, cable and in the bookstores - has never been the same. Edgerton explores Burns's relationship with the historical profession, and shows how academic historians have reacted to The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz and other Burns documentaries with a mixture of elation, envy and anxiety. Gary Edgerton's engaging, straight-forward and balanced study examines the appeal of Burns's documentaries, and explains the historical methodology and production values that make Burns's films exceptional (and often copied!)
Kathy Fuller-Seeley, Associate Professor of History at Virginia Commonwealth University.