Well over a year ago, my good friend James M. Welsh, a great author, a fine professor and an all-’round good fella, asked me to contribute an essay to his upcoming anthology. He wanted me to write about how the  Alamo has been depicted in film. Well, that’s something I know a thing or two about so I instantly agreed. The book didn’t come out instantly, though. No, the road to publication is a long one. The book was finally published this summer.

Today, Jim forwarded to me a review of the book which singled out my contribution. I’m not used to such, so you can imagine how surprised and, ultimately, proud I was to read it. And what’s good enough for me is good enough for you.

Here’s the low-down:

This information is from Choice Reviews Online, an ALA/ACRL publication, available by subscription at http://www.cro2.org/.

The Literature/Film Reader: Issues of Adaptation, ed. by James M. Welsh and Peter Lev.  Scarecrow, 2007.  361p bibl index afp ISBN 0810859491 pbk, $45.00; ISBN 9780810859494 pbk, $45.00.

Reviewed in 2008 Sep CHOICE.

This is a welcome addition to literature on screen adaptation, which in recent years has enjoyed a boom with titles like Robert Stam’s Literature through Film: Realism, Magic, and the Art of Adaptation (CH, Jul’05, 42-6390) and Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Adaptation (2006). Roughly half the essays collected here appeared in Literature/Film Quarterly (1973- ), but the remaining essays were not previously unpublished and are by prominent scholars in the field, Sarah Cardwell and David Kranz among them. In keeping with Literature/Film Quarterly’s editorial stance, the essays avoid the jargon of contemporary cinema studies yet bespeak scholarly research and sophisticated analysis. Welsh (emer., Salisbury Univ.) and Lev (Towson Univ.) provide a pleasant mix, offering d iscussions of general issues on the one hand and analyses of single adaptations ranging from Starship Troopers to various Shakespeare plays on the other. A particularly interesting section explores how films about history can be conceptualized as adaptations; especially noteworthy is Frank Thompson’s admirably lucid yet sophisticated look at cinematic accounts of the Alamo. This reviewer cannot imagine a more accessible, representative overview of the study of screen adaptations.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. – N. A. Baker, Earlham College © American Library Association. Contact permissions@ala-choice.org for permission to reproduce or redistribute.

Lucid, the man said. Sophisticated, he said. Ah, give me a moment to bask in this and then things will return to normal.