"As opposed to previous volumes focused on topics like slavery or the West, Writing History with Lightning edited by Matthew Christopher Hulbert and John C. Inscoe offers an expansive look at how films represent the history of nineteenth-century America and, in turn, how those depictions influence the ways in which mass audiences remember, envision, and reimagine the nation's past. Across twenty-six essays, a group of prominent historians, including Catherine Clinton, Kenneth Greenberg, and Marcus Rediker, moves beyond separating fact from fiction to consider the raw power that movies possess in influencing broad interpretations of American history"--
