Book Description
This digital document is an article from Cineaste, published by Cineaste Publishers, Inc. on March 22, 2005. The length of the article is 865 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: American Racist: the Life and Films of Thomas Dixon.(Book Review)
Author: Patrick McGilligan
Publication: Cineaste (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2005
Publisher: Cineaste Publishers, Inc.
Volume: 30Issue: 2Page: 71(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description
The investigation studies Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon as a novel that comes to giveness in terms of three strata of manifestation: the arty, the rhizomatic, and the acosmic. Utilizing a affective turn implemented within the phenomenological movement by Michael Henry, the study proposes that alongside a rhizomatic mode of accessibility promoting transcendence, Mason & Dixon manifests a withholding of transcendence.

The study investigates the manifestation of this ontological withholding by carrying out the phenomenological reduction established by Edmund Husserl, and by elucidating the phenomenon of immanence in the literary text by means of a theory of auto-affection rooted in - but not reducible to - such methodological reduction. The study proposes that the thematization of anomaly in Mason & Dixon may be unconstructed by means of phenomenological moves that uncover strata of phenomenalization that are not apparent on a thematic or merely playful level. These strata, with their promotion of immanence at the expense of transcendence, are found to be complexly affective in nature. The affectivity governing the withholding of transcendence in these strata is discovered to be instrumental in the work's critique of colonial modes of spatialization, of logocentric modes of transcendence, and of post-Nietzschean modes of affective mastery.

Mason & Dixon discloses a tension between a mode of anomaly that is part of a normal/anomalous dichotomy and a mode of anomaly that is doubly anomalous. Manifested as a nonspatial zone, the doubly anomalous becomes manifested on the hither side of oppositional structures in the novel, such as truth/untruth. The doubly anomalous in Mason & Dixon is identified as an "acosmic" zone of affectivity in which mastering intellectualizations fall short of their telos. Insofar as the "acosmic" occurs within logocentric cartography, it implies an unsettling of every horizontal subject, of nature as the property of man, and of freeplay as the medium of will to power. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of Southern History, published by Thomson Gale on August 1, 2007. The length of the article is 941 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Thomas Dixon Jr. and the Birth of Modern America.(Thomas Dixon Jr. and the Birth of Modern America: Making the Modern South)(Book review)
Author: Nina Silber
Publication: Journal of Southern History (Magazine/Journal)
Date: August 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 73Issue: 3Page: 728(3)

Article Type: Book review

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This digital document is an article from Journal of International Affairs, published by Columbia University School of International Public Affairs on September 22, 2002. The length of the article is 6923 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Ecoviolence? Links between population growth, environmental scarcity and violent conflict in Thomas Homer-Dixon's work (1).
Author: Nils Petter Gleditsch
Publication: Journal of International Affairs (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2002
Publisher: Columbia University School of International Public Affairs
Volume: 56Issue: 1Page: 283(23)

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Thomas Dixon has a notorious reputation as the writer of the source material for D.W. Griffith's groundbreaking and controversial 1915 feature film The Birth of a Nation. Perhaps unfairly, Dixon has been branded an arch-conservative and a racist obsessed with what he viewed as "the Negro problem." As American Racist makes clear, however, Dixon was a complex, multitalented individual who, as well as writing some of the most popular novels of the early twentieth century, was involved in the production of some eighteen films.

Dixon used the motion picture as a propaganda tool for his often outrageous opinions on race, communism, socialism, and feminism. His most spectacular production, The Fall of a Nation (1916), argues for American preparedness in the face of war and boasts a musical score by Victor Herbert, making it the first American feature film to have an original score by a major composer. Like the majority of Dixon's films, The Fall of a Nation has been lost, but had it survived, it might well have taken its place alongside The Birth of a Nation as a masterwork of silent film. Anthony Slide examines each of Dixon's films and discusses the novels from which they were adapted. Slide chronicles Dixon's transformation from a major supporter of the original Ku Klux Klan in his early novels to an ardent critic of the modern Klan in his last film, Nation Aflame. American Racist is the first book to discuss Dixon's work outside of literature and provide a wide overview of the life and career of this highly controversial twentieth-century southern populist. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Scholarly Analysis of a very Complex Figure
I initially wrote this review for a film journal which shall remain nameless. It insisted that I slant my review by casting insinuations of racism on an author who is a very distinguished film scholar and a fine human being who has a track record of publications for the past thirty years and more. While CINEASTE saw no problem in publishing an objective review, this nameless journal did. I will not engage in such scurrillous activities merely to gain another publication credit and present my review for readers as follows.

During the early 1980s I acquired a copy of THE CLANSMAN (1905) by Thomas Dixon. Familiar with D.W. Griffith's feature film version THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), I scanned the opening pages with some interest but the purple nature of its prose and a virulent racism far exceeding anything found in the notorious film version prevented any further excavation on my part. The book is now missing since my move across the Atlantic and until I read this recent biography I believed both Dixon and his works worthy of consignment to oblivion. However, this is a misguided judgement. If Anthony Slide neither wishes to praise Dixon nor to bury him, he has instead provided a highly insightful study into an author whose ideology requires appropriate undersdtanding rather than immediate rejection.

Slide's book places Dixon's work in a relevant socio-historical context necessary to understand a writer who, though promoting repugnant ideals, often reflected certain dominant ideas of his era. Dixon was also a lawyer, minister, playwright, and contemporary auteur responsible for the production of some eighteen feature films between 1914 and 1937, the most famous being THE BIRTH OF A NATION. Yet his racism was contradictory. Although sharing views similar to those of Leni Riefenstahl concerning African-Americans, he never deigrated Jews and he respected Native Americans. He never supported the Southern cause in the Civil War but espoused reconciliation and union instead. However, like Griffith, Dixon was influenced by the dark myth of Reconstruction and feared the supposed Negro threat to American life. But, as Slide shows, these views differed little from those held by Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson. They would certainly not receive unqualified approval from today's Aryan Nation since Dixon's ideology contained several contradictions that Slide analyzes throughout his study.

Although Griffith's film revived the fortunes of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, Dixon never supported its rebirth and even condemned it as his 1907 novel THE TRAITOR and his last screen credit NATION AFLAME (1937) show. Like Griffith, he idealized a remove historical image of an organization that was actually disbanded by its creator Nathan Bedford Forrest two years after its foundation in 1867 as John Wyeth mentions in his still classic study THAT DEVIL FORREST (1899). Slide's chapters emphasize that "Dixon is a complex character, and while his on-screen commentary on race, on miscegenation, on women's uffrage, on socialism, and on communism may appear outmoded, one should never doubt Dixon's integrity or his supreme faith in his Southern philosophy." (7) He saw the South as being representative of any American state espousing common conservative values against elements felt to be alien such as the Negro, feminism, and socialism. In other words, Dixon had much in common with the contemporary ideas examined by Richard Slotkin in THE FATAL ENVIRONMENT: THE MYTH OF CUSTER IN THE AGE OF INDUSTRIALIZATION, 1800-1890 (1988)

Like Griffith, Dixon saw motion pictures not just as entertainment but more as a means for promoting serious ideas. Thus Slide concentrates on Dixon in terms of his role as a member of the contemporary film community rather than as a literary figure. The first four chapters place Dixon within the necessary historical context to understand his beliefs as well as his reproductions of Southern history on print, stage, and film. After THE BIRTH OF A NATION, Dixon concentrated more on cinema. But, despite his racial views, he was often ahead of his time on other issues such as supporting animal rights (like Jack London in his posthumous 1917 novel MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY, opposing capital punishment, and protesting against scientific involvement in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction as his unproduced one-act play THE HOPE OF THE WORLD (1924) reveals. Yet despite espousing segregation and opposing miscegenation, Dixon never held any personal animosity against blacks like later twentieth century racists; instead Dixon believed in separate development allowing the race to follow its own particular cultural and historical destiny as he saw it, one that could never match the achievements of white civilization. However, in the opening chapters, Slide suggests that Dixon may have struggled against repressed sexual feelings involving black males and white females manifesting themselves in badly written purple prose passages in novels such as THE LEOPARD'S SPOTS (1902) and THE CLANSMAN (1905). Slide cites a telephone conversation he had with James Zebulon Wright during 2003 concerning Dixon's first sexual experience with his black friend Dick (33). In 1996, Wright wrote an unpublished doctoral dissertation on Dixon and had access to many of the author's private papers which his widow later destroyed. In his 1984 study, THE CRUCIBLE OF RACE, Joel Williamson states that Dixon wrote THE LEOPARD'S SPOTS believing that his mother has been sexually molested when a child by a black man. Slide also reveals that Dixon entered into negotations for a Kinemacolor version of THE CLANSMAN in 1911 but it is unlikely that any footage was shot. But THE BIRTH OF A NATION boosted the status of both Dixon and Griffith leading to the former directing THE FALL OF A NATION the following year. The film encouraged a developing pro-war mood in America. and doing quite well at the box-office. Since the film (like other Dixon collaborations)has not survived, it is difficult to judge the quality of this work. These missing films result in Slide undertaking a necessary, but problematic, reconstruction by secondary sources which often hinder the necessity of having complete access to all the relevant evidence needed to evaluate fully the historical implications of the material.

Dixon's views on female emancipation were also antiquated as Slide shows in his comparison of the two film versions of THE FOOLISH VIRGIN (1916, 1924). Socialism was also a threat to the fabric of American society as Dixon's second novel THE ONE WOMAN (1903) and its 1918 film version reveals. But although Dixon shared contemporary anti-Red sentiments displayed in his novels COMRADES (1909) and THE ROOT OF EVIL (1911), contradictory elements also appear in the text especially in the latter work. Slide believes that this book "is better identified as an attack on capitalism, and there are many passages that might well be regarded as appopriate to the early years of the twenty-first century rather than the early years of the twentieth." (127) Dixon also attacks slavery in this novel which Slide argues "almost compensates for the worst excesses of racism to be found elsewhere in Dixon's writings." (130)

Slide also shows that the 1920s represented Dixon's most productive period as a journeyman scenarist before the Wall Street Crash. Dixon later failed to change with the times despite his early support for the New Deal and he tended to repeat formulas. However, Dixon contributed storylines to four contemporary Westerns and several melodramas. He also returned to directing and scripting THE MARK OF THE BEAST (1924), one of the first American films to deal with psychoanalysis long before LADY IN THE DARK (1944) and SPELLBOUND (1945. The con cluding chapters deal with the last adaptation of Dixon's anti-Klan novel NATION AFLAME (1937), the final obscure years before his death in 1946, and Raymond Rohauer's attempts to gain exclusive copyright of THE BIRTH OF A NATION.

AMERICAN RACIST is a pioneering work. In many ways, it illustrates important issues of character complexity and tensions affecting certain historical eras that also appear in Maureen 0'Hara's TIS HERSELF (2004)and Julie Gottlieb's 2000 study FEMININE FASCISTS. 0'Hara discusses dark Ford's contradictory and his hidden bi-sexuality while Gottlieb traces the role of former suffragettes in Oswald Mosely's British Union of Fascists in the 1930s. People and historical events are often not as monologic as politically correct academics, attempting to control information and silence alternative voices in ways resembling totalitarian governments, wish. Anthony Slide's book is a welcome addition to the many informed and scholarly studies written outside the mainstream that this particular press has encouraged. It stands shoulder-to-shoulder alongside Stephen Youngkin's exellent biography of Peter Lorre, THE LOST ONE (2005). The long awaited Orson Welles biography by Joseph McBride will soon add to the prestigious list of publications that this company has issued over the past ten years.

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Book Description
In an accessible, and entertaining style, this concise, no-nonsense guidebook gives prospective and current students advice for achieving success in academic life. Includes subjects such as making the transition from high school to college; making use of lectures and seminars; using libraries and the internet; note-taking, essays, seminars, and presentations; common mistakes to avoid; writing with clarity and style; and how to take exams. ... Read more

Book Description
The debate between science and religion is never out of the news: emotions run high, fuelled by polemical bestsellers like iThe God Delusion/i and, at the other end of the spectrum, high-profile campaigns to teach 'Intelligent Design' in schools.Yet there is much more to the debate than the clash of these extremes.As Thomas Dixon shows in this balanced and thought-provoking introduction, a whole range of views, subtle arguments, and fascinating perspectives can be taken on this complex and centuries-old subject. He explores not only the key philosophical questions that underlie the debate, but also highlights the social, political, and ethical contexts that have made 'science and religion' such a fraught and interesting topic in the modern world.Along the way, he examines landmark historical episodes such as the Galileo affair, Charles Darwin's own religious and scientific odyssey, the Scopes 'Monkey Trial' in Tennessee in 1925, and the Dover Area School Board case of 2005, and includes perspectives from non-Christian religions and examples from across the physical, biological, and social sciences. ... Read more

Book Description
1912. Dixon's earlier works including The Clansman, which was made into the movie, Birth of A Nation, made his reputation as the anti-black novelist for the Jim Crow south. In The Sins of the Father Dixon writes To the Reader: I wish it understood that I have not used in this novel the private life of Captain Randolph Shotwell, to whom this book is dedicated. I have drawn the character of my central figure from the authentic personal history of Major Daniel Norton himself, a distinguished citizen of the far South, with whom I was intimately acquainted for many years. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing. ... Read more

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Product Description
Color album that samples the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway's operations roughly from 1950 to the mid 1970s with emphasis on the latter portion of the span. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
With and introduction and notes by John David Smith

Thomas Dixon is perhaps best known as the author of the best-selling early twentieth-century Klan trilogy that included the novel The Clansman (1905), which provided the core narrative for D.W. Griffith's groundbreaking and still controversial film The Birth of a Nation (1915). In his twenty-eighth and last novel, The Flaming Sword (1939), Dixon takes to task his long-standing black critics, especially W.E.B. DuBois, by attacking what he considered to be a vast conspiracy by blacks and Communists to destroy America. A new introduction and detailed notes by John David Smith offer a valuable historical and critical perspective on this important and divisive classic of American literature. ... Read more

Book Description
Beginning with Lee's surrender and the subsequent assassination of Abraham Lincoln, The Clansman describes the anxiety and confusion of the years immediately after the South's defeat. Between 1865 and 1870, the whole nation struggled with questions of justice and revenge, forgiveness and reparation. With 350,000 Southern soldiers dead, ensuring the welfare of their widows and orphans, as well as the rest of the population, was of paramount concern to the survivors.

Faced with a total breakdown of law and order, some Southern leaders called upon the spirits of their ancestors, the clansmen of Old Scotland. The Ku Klux Klan was conceived as an "Invisible Empire" pledged to protect the people of the South. This novel tells its story. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

THE BOOK WORTH BURNING
The only worth of this book is its place in American prejudice, hatred, bigotry, and bad romance writing. After that, it could be a text for the W. Bush administration. A mediocre writer at best Dixon was, and he borrowed the contemporary writing of his day (romance) to aid his hideous propaganda. As a side note, I read this book in a graduate literature class on racism and southern writing. So. I'm disappointed -- dismayed -- that some actually think this book is anything more than hate propaganda. Lord help us.

An excellent historical novel
This book is valuable reading for those who would like to understand the Genesis for racial animosities and problems that still occur in both the North and the South today.It also provides a familiarity with the actions and motives of the true historical Ku Klux Klan in contrast to the misguided bigots who preach racial hatred under the guise of the neo Ku Klux Klan of today. Film and theatre students will find this book interesting as the basis for D.W. Griffith's acclaimed film classic "Birth of a Nation". If possible locate an unabridged copy of this classic book. ... Read more