Review by Choice Review
In recent years, many scholars have looked into how the public memory is produced and how it affects the nature of national memory. This volume is unique in its study of the way several forms of US culture--the film, TV, essays--allow an emergent view of a specific American memory. Mintz (Hebrew literature, Jewish Theological Seminary) centers his discussion on analysis of the reception of three movies: Judgment at Nuremburg, The Pawnbroker, and Shindler's List. He focuses on two approaches: first, he looks at the Holocaust as an exception to the flow of history and therefore a unique phenomenon; second, he proceeds from the idea that each culture will filter the Holocaust through its history, which in modern US history includes Jewish immigration, the Civil Rights Movement, and media attention to the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Mintz concludes with a meditation on "the future of memorialization." This book joins a literature that includes George Mosse's Fallen Soldiers (CH, Oct'90), G. Kurt Piehler's Remembering War the American Way (1995), and US histories such as Peter Novick's outstanding The Holocaust in American Life (CH, Nov'99) and Edward Linenthal's Preserving Memory (CH, Oct'95). Including notes and halftones, the present volume is recommended for graduate students and above. T. Cripps formerly, Morgan State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
