Non-Fiction

Title: Henry Ford's Moving Picture Show Vol.I 1914-1920
Author: Phillip W. Stewart
Reviewed by: Dave Brown

ISBN (for Amazon store): 0981744478

This is the first volume of the HENRY FORD'S MOVING PICTURE SHOW: An Investigator's Guide to the Films Produced by the Ford Motor Company series. It focuses on the initial six years (1914-1920) of the Ford Motor Company motion picture collection that is held in the U.S. National Archives and identifies 935 films. To assist in your investigation of this historically significant film collection, two indexes are also provided--an alphabetical title index and a comprehensive subject index.

The Henry Ford's Moving Picture Show is a multi-book series of guides written to facilitate the public and professional use of the film footage in the Ford Motor Company Collection and to describe its contents in a way that has been, until now, unavailable. The volumes ultimately published under this title, catalog the surviving films produced or acquired by the Ford Motor Company between 1914 and 1954. When the U.S. National Archives accepted these historically significant films in 1963, it provided an all inclusive formal title of: Films Relating to the Ford Motor Company, the Henry Ford Family, Noted Personalities, Industry, and Numerous Americana and Other Subjects...and this pretty well sums up the visual content of the collection.

Altogether, the collection holds approximately 1.8 million feet of silent, black and white, 35-millimeter celluloid film. The main goal of Henry Ford's Moving Picture Show is to provide a useful and practical resource to the moving images of the world during the first half of the 20th Century, as seen through the camera lens of the Ford Motion Picture Department and its successor, the Ford Photographic Department. These films have superb historical value that stems from their very broad subject-matter coverage. Overall, the moving images contained in these films are truly Americana in motion.

Title: Crossing the Line
Author: Bill Cain
Genre: Non-Fiction Sub-Category: Memoir
Reviewed by: Ron Camarda

ISBN (for Amazon store): 125762833X

One Soldier's Journey to Iraq and Back Again. The author's account of his participation in Desert Shield, Desert Storm and Desert Calm, as a member of the 42nd Field Artillery Brigade, 1990-91. 57 photos (mostly from private sources and most are in color; in the printed book they are B&W but are in color in the PDF), 2 maps specially commissioned for this book.

Title: The Boys of Wasioja
Author: Michael Eckers
Genre: Non-Fiction Sub-Category: History
Reviewed By: Lee Boyland

ISBN (for MWSA Amazon store): 0977774139

This is the story of 68 men who enlisted early in the Civil War to fight for the Union. Signing up in Dodge County, Minnesota this group included 10 students from a seminary in Wasioja. The book follows these men through their participation in the Western Campaigns. Their defining moment came on the second day at Chickamauga as part of the defense of Horshoe Ridge under the direct command of General George Thomas, the Rock of Chickamauga. Continuing through Missionary Ridge, Atlanta, the March to the Sea and the Carolinas Campaign, the Second Minnesota lays claim to having marched more than 5,000 miles during their four years of service. This story is of the Dodge County men; how they lived, fought and died. It includes information and photos on several of these soldiers and their final resting places.

Title: “200,000 Heroes”
Author: Leon Weckstein
Genre: Non-Fiction Sub-Category: History
Reveiwed by: Weymouth D. Symmes

ISBN (links to MWSA Amazon store): 1555716989

Italy, July 1944. The unendurable insult to Italy's inherently genial way of life brought about by Hitler's storm-troopers and Mussolini's Fascist toadies was both taking its toll on the people of Italy and creating a fledgling underground Resistance movement whose heroic ranks would soon swell to nearly 200,000 brave men and women.

Author Leon Weckstein was there--an American GI in combat fighting with and befriending the Partisans. Here is the story, as told through eye-witness accounts and carefully researched historical archives, of the Italian Partisans and their American OSS allies' battle to destroy the Nazi-Fascist regime and expel the culprits from their beloved Italy.