5 Great Books on Silent Film History, selected by Terry Lindvall

“History of the American Cinema” series: v.1, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907, by Charles Musser; v.3, An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915-1928, by Richard Koszarski. California, 1994.

One Thousand Nights at the Movies: An Illustrated History of Motion Pictures, 1895-1915, by Q. David Bowers and Kathryn Fuller-Seeley.  Whitman Publishing, 2013.

The Parade’s Gone By … , by Kevin Brownlow.  Ballantine, 1970.

Screening out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry, by Lary May.  Oxford, 1980.

Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture, by Peter Kobel.  Little, Brown and Co., 2007.

Terry Lindvall, who occupies the endowed C. S. Lewis Chair of Communication and Christian Thought, Virginia Wesleyan College, has taught at the College of William & Mary, Duke University, and numerous other institutions.  He has authored books on film (The Silents of God, Sanctuary Cinema, Celluloid Sermons) and on humor and faith (The Mother of All Laughter, Surprised by Laughter).