Welcome Aboard, Jim!

Thanks to publisher John Libbey and the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, we have recently completed a new project. Our next book will be called American Cinematographers in the Great War and will be a complete overview of the adventures of American cameramen in World War I, set against the rise of the American film industry and the use of film for propaganda purposes by the European authorities.

Co-Author Jim Castellan

As co-author for this new book, we welcome aboard James W. Castellan, an independent scholar researching a biography of journalist Oswald F. Schuette and articles about some historically significant individuals with whom Schuette associated, including photojournalist and World War I cinematographer Wilbur H. Durborough. Castellan, a graduate of Brown University with an M.S. from the University of Pennsyslvania, retired from the pharmaceutical industry in 2001.

Review "Shooting the Great War" (2013)

Here's what one of the readers says about our book on Dawson and the American Correspondent Film Company. Read more on www.amazon.com

Ron van Dopperen and Cooper Graham uncovered one of the least known, yet vastly important efforts in the Great War: Propaganda through film. The American Correspondent Film Company was the brainchild of Heinrich Albert, the German Commercial Attache and Spymaster in the United States during the war. With funds from the Imperial War Department he helped organize a wholly new propaganda war in the United States. Despite its failure to convince an American public not to go to war against Germany in World War I, the use of propaganda as a tactical weapon became one of the mainstays of Nazi Germany some twenty years later.

Van Dopperen and Graham's book is unique and a must read for anyone who wants to understand the use of propaganda in the twentieth century

Extended Edition Book on Dawson Now Available

Thanks to new input that we received from the United States and Austria, a new extended edition of the book on Albert K. Dawson and his photographic work during World War I is now available on the Amazon websites in America and Europe.

With special thanks to Norbert Brown (Vincennes) and Sema Colpan (Vienna) for their invaluable information from over here and over there!

In this new edition, the reader will learn more on Dawson's first photographic assignments, his youth in his hometown Vincennes, Indiana, his reports in Vincennes on the Great War, as well as the letters that he wrote to his family on his experiences in wartime Europe.

Over 30 new pages have been added to this edition of Shooting the Great War: Albert Dawson and the American Correspondent Film Company, 1914-1918.

Albert K. Dawson, portrait from Vincennes Capital,  9 december 1911

Link to newspaper article 

New Edition Dawson Book Available Next Month

The book on World War I cinematographer Albert Dawson has been received well - particularly in his hometown Vincennes, Indiana. We got some great comments from local (film) history fans, and as a result the authors also received new information that we will incorporate in a new edition, to be printed next month in December 2013.

Thank you all!