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Robert Brent Toplin, ed. Oliver Stone's USA: Film, History, and Controversy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 335 pp., $34.95 (cloth).
Although his two most recent films-U Turn (1997) and Any Given Sunday (1999)-have attracted relatively little attention, Oliver Stone was for nearly a decade one of the most celebrated, if not also one of the most reviled, filmmakers in the U.S. In contrast to many Hollywood producers and directors, who tend to avoid topics with serious political content, Stone has consistently challenged audiences to confront seriously such issues as violence, war, corruption, and morality. Even if he hasn't always succeeded, Stone certainly has had little competition in establishing himself (as this excellent volume describes him) as "Hollywood's most controversial creator of movies about the American past" (3).
The essays collected in Oliver Stone's USA grew out of a session, "The Film Nixon as History and Commentary on American Civilization," which Robert Brent Toplin organized for the American Historical Association's annual conference in January 1997. Thinking that Stone would never...