Book Reviews

in: Prince, 2009: 121). If one looks at 9/11 as a watershed, one accepts what had happened before. If one looks at 9/11 as a beginning or something that had emerged out of nowhere, one is guilty of a-historicism. Prince’s 2009 account on American Film in the Age of Terrorism cannot be accused of the latter. Although set during George W. Bush’s presidency, Prince’s analysis draws heavily on the “ages of terrorism ” that America has witnessed since the late 1960s. Prince’s focus is on American movies, documentaries and TV series on the 9/11 attack and the war in Iraq, however, and for reasons not explained by the author, not on the campaign in Afghanistan. Prince provides a very good insight into how the attacks and the subsequent War on Terror came about (by invoking either a description of the decision-making process as such or the data gathered by the 9/11 Commission, for example). What is more, he delivers an interesting analysis of what American cinema looked like during the Bush presidency and how his Administration employed the movie/documentary making industry to create and legitimize its own spectacle of terrorism and/or terrorism of spectacle (Giroux, 2006). Using the Vietnam War as a main point of reference, Prince claims that the American movi