Titles by Noah Gittell

&ldquo;Finally, someone takes baseball movies seriously!&nbsp;Baseball: The Movie&nbsp;blends the passion of a fan with the rigorous analysis of a film critic to create a persuasive argument that the baseball movie matters&mdash;to baseball, to Hollywood, even to America.&rdquo;&nbsp;<br />&#8203;&mdash;Ben Mankiewicz, host, Turner Classic Movies&nbsp;<br /><br /><b>Featuring&nbsp;<i>Field of Dreams</i>,&nbsp;<i>The Bad News Bears</i>,&nbsp;<i>A League of Their Own</i>, and more: a&nbsp;probing and entertaining work at the intersection of pop culture and sports</b><br /><br />Baseball has always been a symbol as much as a sport. With a blend of individual confrontation and team play, a luxurious pace, and an immaculate urban parkland setting, it offers a sunny rendering of the American Dream, both the hard work that underpins it and the rewards it promises.&nbsp;<br /><br />Film, America&#39;s other national pastime, which magnifies and mythologizes all it touches, has long been the ideal medium to canonize this aspirational idea.&nbsp;<br /><br /><i>Baseball: The Movie</i>&nbsp;is the first definitive history of this film genre that was born in 1915 and remains artistically and culturally vital more than a century later. Writer and critic Noah Gittell sheds light on well-known classics and overlooked gems, exploring how&nbsp;baseball cinema creates a stage upon which the American ideal is born, performed, and repeatedly redefined.<br /><br />Traversing history and mythmaking, cynicism and nostalgia, this thoroughly researched book takes readers on a multifaceted tour of baseball on film.