From the Publisher
One of the most important resources in years, this book is already a classic.CHOICE
This ambitious project, grounded in a broad historicity, will elicit some dissent, but Robinson's first-rate scholarship will be difficult to counter and will stand the test of time.American Historical Review
Robinson's assertions that capitalists controlled and manipulated the image of blackness . . . are a very important contribution.Journal of Southern History
A complex, thoughtful perspective on the protean nature of American culture and those who profited and suffered from its progression.Journal of American History
There is nothing like this book. At once a magnificent work of social and cultural history, an anthropology of race, and a political economy of racial capitalism and Empire, this is the most original examination of the American film industry ever published. But like all of Robinson's work, Forgeries of Memory and Meaning does much more, extending over three centuries to reconstruct the roots of modern black representation in the works of Shakespeare, scientific discourse, and early minstrelsy. And his prodigious research has uncovered celluloid gems and theater works I never knew existed.Robin D. G. Kelley, University of Southern California
Careful, exhaustive scholarship and densely packed argumentation. . . . One of the most important resources in years, this book is already a classic. . . . Essential.CHOICE
Cedric Robinson provides us with a distinctive and distinguished intervention in discussions of race, representation, and performance in American cinema and theater before World War II. This informative and engaging study offers an array of new and unexpected insights.Charles Musser, Yale University
Robinson explores an impressive variety of important films, sustaining his discussion with fresh, insightful angles on the political economy of each film. This book makes a significant contribution to several interwoven, discursive currents involving race and representation, social Darwinism and scientific racism, minstrelsy and modernism, the plantation and the jungle, and black cultural and political resistance to several 'racial regimes' working themselves out in politics, media, and the cinema in America.Ed Guerrero, New York University