Pump 'em Full of Lead! (Filmmakers Series)

If you like gangster films, or you're just interested in the concept of genre, this book will provide plenty of bullets, blood, and brotherhood with just enough high-brow analysis to keep your frontal lobe humming. Author Marilyn Yaquinto does a good job of tracking down every candidate for admission into the gangster film genre, and she's especially good at showing how more recent films from the "Black New Wave" and independent directors are informed by and expand on the notions of the gangster classics of the '30s and '40s and the works of Italian-American directors like Scorsese and Coppola in the '70s and '80s. Pump 'Em Full of Lead is an intellectual bullet fest from Bonnie and Clyde to Boyz N the Hood. --James DiGiovanna