The Western Reader

by Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman

Book Overview

This lavishly-illustrated collection of writings on western movies covers close to a century of American cinematic achievement and includes almost a half-century of essays, commentary, and interviews. The history, mythology, and landscape of the western are skillfully explored.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879102683
• ISBN13: 9780879102685
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Globe Pequot Publishing Group Inc/Bloomsbury
• Length: 408 Pages
• Weight: 1.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

The Real Western Reader

The book is gathered from different essays each concerned with usually one major topic (i.e. a western movie, western director, western actor) The most informative essays deal with the historical context of the Western, pertaining to role of the Western in American culture but particularly with Western movies. Such as Robert Warshow's 1954 essay about the films entitled The Western. Other essays are about postmodern genre changes in the Western such as the psychologcial westerns of the 1950's. For example,essays about John Ford's The Searchers and Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar are included in the book. The book also covers many modern films that expounded on the deconstructionist period of the 1960's of The Wild Bunch to the 1990's with Unforgiven, and then some.