Blu-ray Superhero Bundle (Fantastic Four / Fantastic Four - Rise of the Silver Surfer / X-Men 3 - The Last Stand) - (Amazon.com Exclusive)

• Both Widescreen and Full Screen versions on a single DVD
• Subtitled in English and Spanish, Captioned in French

Catch a wave of "terrific adventure" and "non-stop action" (CBS-TV) in this fun and fantastically entertaining smash-hit! "Invisible Woman: Sue Storm and "Mr. Fantastic" Dr. Reed Richards are about to be married when a mysterious alien... the Silver Surfer... crashes the proceedings and heralds Earth's impending destruction. With time running out, the Fantastic Four reluctantly teams up with the nefarious Dr. Doom in a thrilling effort to save our planet!Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is another entertaining romp for the Marvel-superhero franchise. Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd), is treading on thin ice when his fiancée, Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba), thinks he's more interested in a series of cosmic phenomena occurring around ! the earth than in the preparations for their upcoming wedding. Sorry, ladies, but Reed is right. The disturbances are caused by a surge of cosmic power from a mysterious being called the Silver Surfer (an all-CGI creation, modeled by Doug Jones and voiced by Laurence Fishburne), who not only zooms around the skies on his board, but also has enough power to fight the FF, sometimes by turning their own power against them, not only mixing up Sue and Reed, but also Johnny Storm, the Human Torch (Chris Evans), and Ben Grimm, the Thing (Michael Chiklis). But that's not the worst of it. The Surfer is only an opening act, a herald looking for planets that his master, Galactus, can consume for his sustenance.

With its initial installment, Fantastic Four established itself as the superhero franchise that didn't take itself too seriously, and that continues here. There are numerous moments of laugh-out-loud humor, and the most angst they suffer is whether Sue and Reed will ! ever be able to live a normal family life. (That, and whether ! they'll ever really get married, of course.) If Fantastic Four were a normal superhero franchise, the ending would be a knock-down drag-out war with Galactus, featuring the FF in a colossal battle for the planet Earth and the lives of everyone on it. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer just doesn't do that, and we don't quite get the payoff we expected. Effects are dazzling, but the Surfer looks too metallic, more like a skyriding T-1000 robot. --David Horiuchi

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer Extras


View exclusive clips (including interviews with Fantastic Four Creator Stan Lee and Screenwriter Don Payne), download AIM icons and wallpapers and browse the extensive photo gallery at our Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer minisite.

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Beyond Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Fantastic Four Toys & Games

Fantastic Four Paperback Series

Fantastic Four Comics & Graphic Novels

Fantastic Four Video Games

Fantastic Four Posters, Stickers and More

Fantastic Four Apparel

More of the Four on DVD

Fantastic Four Extended Cut

The Fantastic Four Animated Series

Fantastic Four on Blu-Ray

Stills from Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Catch a wave of "terrific adventure" and "non-stop action" (CBS-TV) in this fun and fantastically entertaining smash-hit! "Invisible Woman: Sue Storm and "Mr. Fantastic" Dr. Reed Richards are about to be married when a mysterious alien... the Silver Surfer... crashes the proceedings and heralds Earth's impending destruction. With time running out, the Fantastic Four reluctantly teams up with the nefarious Dr. Do! om in a thrilling effort to save our planet!Fantastic Four:! Rise of the Silver Surfer is another entertaining romp for the Marvel-superhero franchise. Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd), is treading on thin ice when his fiancée, Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba), thinks he's more interested in a series of cosmic phenomena occurring around the earth than in the preparations for their upcoming wedding. Sorry, ladies, but Reed is right. The disturbances are caused by a surge of cosmic power from a mysterious being called the Silver Surfer (an all-CGI creation, modeled by Doug Jones and voiced by Laurence Fishburne), who not only zooms around the skies on his board, but also has enough power to fight the FF, sometimes by turning their own power against them, not only mixing up Sue and Reed, but also Johnny Storm, the Human Torch (Chris Evans), and Ben Grimm, the Thing (Michael Chiklis). But that's not the worst of it. The Surfer is only an opening act, a herald looking for planets that his master, Galactus, can c! onsume for his sustenance.

With its initial installment, Fantastic Four established itself as the superhero franchise that didn't take itself too seriously, and that continues here. There are numerous moments of laugh-out-loud humor, and the most angst they suffer is whether Sue and Reed will ever be able to live a normal family life. (That, and whether they'll ever really get married, of course.) If Fantastic Four were a normal superhero franchise, the ending would be a knock-down drag-out war with Galactus, featuring the FF in a colossal battle for the planet Earth and the lives of everyone on it. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer… just doesn't do that, and we don't quite get the payoff we expected. Effects are dazzling, but the Surfer looks too metallic, more like a skyriding T-1000 robot. --David Horiuchi

View Stills from the Blu-Ray's Exclusive Games (Click for larger image):

Catch a wave of "terrific adventure" and "non-stop action" (CBS-TV) in this fun and fantastically entertaining smash-hit! "Invisible Woman: Sue Storm and "Mr. Fantastic" Dr. Reed Richards are about to be married when a mysterious alien... the Silver Surfer... crashes the proceedings and heralds Earth's impending destruction. With time running out, the Fantastic Four reluctantly teams up with the nef! arious Dr. Doom in a thrilling effort to save our planet!Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is another entertaining romp for the Marvel-superhero franchise. Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd), is treading on thin ice when his fiancée, Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba), thinks he's more interested in a series of cosmic phenomena occurring around the earth than in the preparations for their upcoming wedding. Sorry, ladies, but Reed is right. The disturbances are caused by a surge of cosmic power from a mysterious being called the Silver Surfer (an all-CGI creation, modeled by Doug Jones and voiced by Laurence Fishburne), who not only zooms around the skies on his board, but also has enough power to fight the FF, sometimes by turning their own power against them, not only mixing up Sue and Reed, but also Johnny Storm, the Human Torch (Chris Evans), and Ben Grimm, the Thing (Michael Chiklis). But that's not the worst of it. The Surfer i! s only an opening act, a herald looking for planets that his m! aster, G alactus, can consume for his sustenance.

With its initial installment, Fantastic Four established itself as the superhero franchise that didn't take itself too seriously, and that continues here. There are numerous moments of laugh-out-loud humor, and the most angst they suffer is whether Sue and Reed will ever be able to live a normal family life. (That, and whether they'll ever really get married, of course.) If Fantastic Four were a normal superhero franchise, the ending would be a knock-down drag-out war with Galactus, featuring the FF in a colossal battle for the planet Earth and the lives of everyone on it. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer just doesn't do that, and we don't quite get the payoff we expected. Effects are dazzling, but the Surfer looks too metallic, more like a skyriding T-1000 robot. --David Horiuchi

On the DVD
Are you getting tired of big movies initially coming out on substandard DVDs on! ly to be released in better versions later? No such worries with the Power Cosmic Edition of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which delivers the goods. The double-sided disc 1 has both widescreen and full-screen editions of the movie, with two commentary tracks. On the first, director Tim Story talks about FF inside jokes and what had to be cut out of the movie. The second combines producer Avi Arad (has anyone recorded more superhero DVD commentaries?), screenwriter Don Payne, and editors Peter S. Elliot and William Hoy (only the last two sound like they were actually in the room at the same time) covering some of the same ground: comic-book references, special effects, etc. On disc 2 are five extended/deleted scenes (almost 10 minutes total) with commentary by Story, including a longer title sequence and some comic relief. "Family Bonds" is a 46-minute "fly on the wall" documentary that follows the crew as they scout locations, test early special ef! fects, and then work with the cast. There's a multi-angle loo! k at the Fantasticar and five featurettes (some of which are more substantial than you'd expect for that term). Topics include the development of the Fantasticar (10 minutes), the Surfer effects (15 minutes), the history of the Surfer in comic books (39 minutes, with interviews of Stan Lee, Jim Starlin, and Ron Marz, and Lee describes himself as his own biggest fan!), the Thing suit (11 minutes), and the music score (four minutes). --David Horiuchi

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer Extras


View exclusive clips (including interviews with Fantastic Four Creator Stan Lee and Screenwriter Don Payne), download AIM icons and wallpapers and browse the extensive photo gallery at our Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer minisite.

Beyond Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Fantastic Four Toys & Games

Fantastic Four Paperback Series

Fantastic Four Comics & Graphic Novels

Fantastic Four Video Games

Fantastic Four Posters, Stickers and More

Fantastic Four Apparel

More of the Four on DVD

Fantastic Four Extended Cut

The Fantastic Four Animated Series

Fantastic Four on Blu-Ray

Stills from Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

• Disc 1: X-MEN WS
• Disc 2: X2 X-MEN UNITED SE WS
• Disc 3: X-MEN 3:THE LAST STAND WS
• Disc 4: FANTASTIC FOUR WS
• Disc 5: FANTASTIC FOUR 2 WP
• Disc 6: DAREDEVIL DC WS
• Disc 7: ELEKTRA WS
• Disc 8: Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes Volume 1 P&S

Fantastic Four

Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and Michael ! Chiklis head a sexy, star-powered cast in this explosive adve! nture ab out a quartet of flawed, ordinary human beings who suddenly find themselves with extraordinary abilities.

After exposure to cosmic radiation, four astronauts become the most remarkable, if dysfunctional, superheroes of all time. Unfortunately, the mission's sponsor has also been transformed ? into the world's most lethal supervillain ? setting the stage for a confrontation of epic proportions. Packed with nonstop action, big laughs and awesome special effects, Fantastic 4 is "powerful fun" (The Baltimore Sun) from start to finish! 

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Catch a wave of "terrific adventure" and "non-stop action" (CBS-TV) in this fun and fantastically entertaining smash-hit! "Invisible Woman: Sue Storm and "Mr. Fantastic" Dr. Reed Richards are about to be married when a mysterious alien... the Silver Surfer... crashes the proceedings and heralds Earth's impending destruction. With time running out, t! he Fantastic Four reluctantly teams up with the nefarious Dr. Doom in a thrilling effort to save our planet!

Daredevil

For Daredevil, justice is blind, and for the guilty?there's hell to pay! Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner ignite dangerous sparks and nonstop thrills in this "dazzling action-adventure" (The Film Journal) about the newest breed of superhero. By day, blind attorney Matt Murdock (Affleck) toils for justice in Hell's Kitchen. By night, he's Daredevil, The Man Without Fear - a powerful, masked vigilante stalking the dark streets with an uncanny "radar sense" that allows him to "see" with superhuman capabilities. But when the love of his life, fiery Elektra Natchios (Garner), is targeted by New York City's ruthless Kingpin of crime (Michael Clarke Duncan) and his deadly assassin Bullseye (Colin Farrell), Daredevil may be about to meet his match.

Fantastic Four
Marvel Comics' first family of superherodom, the Fa! ntastic Four, hits the big screen in a light-hearted and funny adventure. It begins when down-on-his-luck genius Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd, Horatio Hornblower) has to enlist the financial and intellectual help from former schoolmate and rival Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon, Nip/Tuck) in order to pursue outer-space research into human DNA. Also on the trip are Reed's best friend, Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis, The Shield); his former lover, Sue Storm (Jessica Alba, Dark Angel, Sin City), who's now Doom's employee and love interest; and her hotshot-pilot brother, Johnny Storm (Chris Evans, Cellular). Things don't go as planned, of course, and the quartet becomes blessed--or is it cursed?--with superhuman powers: flexibility, brute strength, invisibility and projecting force fields, and bursting into flame. Meanwhile, Doom himself is undergoing a transformation.

Among the many entries in the comic-book-movie frenzy, Fantastic Four is refreshing because it doesn't take itself too seriously. Characterization isn't too deep, and the action is a bit sparse until the final reel (like most "first" superhero movies, it has to go through the "how did we get these powers and what we will do with them" churn). But it's a good-looking cast, and original comic-book cocreator Stan Lee makes his most significant Marvel-movie cameo yet, in a speaking role as the FF's steadfast postal carrier, Willie Lumpkin. Newcomers to superhero movies might find the idea of a family with flexibility, strength, invisibility, and force fields a retread of The Incredibles, but Pixar's animated film was very much a tribute to the FF and other heroes of the last 40 years. The irony is that while Fantastic Four is an enjoyable B-grade movie, it's the tribute, The Incredibles, that turned out to be a film for the ages. --David Horiuchi

Fantastic Four: ! Rise of the Silver Surfer

Fantastic F! our: Ris e of the Silver Surfer is another entertaining romp for the Marvel-superhero franchise. Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd), is treading on thin ice when his fiancée, Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba), thinks he's more interested in a series of cosmic phenomena occurring around the earth than in the preparations for their upcoming wedding. Sorry, ladies, but Reed is right. The disturbances are caused by a surge of cosmic power from a mysterious being called the Silver Surfer (an all-CGI creation, modeled by Doug Jones and voiced by Laurence Fishburne), who not only zooms around the skies on his board, but also has enough power to fight the FF, sometimes by turning their own power against them, not only mixing up Sue and Reed, but also Johnny Storm, the Human Torch (Chris Evans), and Ben Grimm, the Thing (Michael Chiklis). But that's not the worst of it. The Surfer is only an opening act, a herald looking for planets that his master, G! alactus, can consume for his sustenance.

With its initial installment, Fantastic Four established itself as the superhero franchise that didn't take itself too seriously, and that continues here. There are numerous moments of laugh-out-loud humor, and the most angst they suffer is whether Sue and Reed will ever be able to live a normal family life. (That, and whether they'll ever really get married, of course.) If Fantastic Four were a normal superhero franchise, the ending would be a knock-down drag-out war with Galactus, featuring the FF in a colossal battle for the planet Earth and the lives of everyone on it. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer just doesn't do that, and we don't quite get the payoff we expected. Effects are dazzling, but the Surfer looks too metallic, more like a skyriding T-1000 robot. --David Horiuchi

Daredevil

Darker than its popular comic-book predecesso! r Spider-Man, the $80 million extravaganza Darede! vil was packaged for maximum global appeal, its juvenile plot beginning when 12-year-old Matt Murdock is accidentally blinded shortly before his father is murdered. Later an adult attorney in New York's Hell's Kitchen, Murdock (Ben Affleck) uses his remaining, superenhanced senses to battle crime as Daredevil, the masked and vengeful "man without fear," pitted against dominant criminal Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan) and the psychotic Bullseye (Colin Farrell), who can turn almost anything into a deadly projectile. Daredevil is well matched with the dynamic Elektra (Jennifer Garner), but their teaming is as shallow as the movie itself, which is peppered with Marvel trivia and cameo appearances (creator Stan Lee, Clerks director and Daredevil devotee Kevin Smith) and enough computer-assisted stuntwork to give Spidey a run for his money. This is Hollywood product at its most lavishly vacuous; die-hard fans will argue its merits while its red-leathere! d hero swoops and zooms toward a sequel. --Jeff Shannon

Disc 1 Side A: FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER P&S Disc 1 Side B: FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER WS

Disc 2: FANTASTIC FOUR WSDouble sided single layer DVD with both Widescreen and Full Screen versionsFantastic Four
Marvel Comics' first family of superherodom, the Fantastic Four, hits the big screen in a light-hearted and funny adventure. It begins when down-on-his-luck genius Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd, Horatio Hornblower) has to enlist the financial and intellectual help from former schoolmate and rival Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon, Nip/Tuck) in order to pursue outer-space research into human DNA. Also on the trip are Reed's best friend, Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis, The Shield); his former lover, Sue Storm (Jessica Alba, Dark Angel, Sin City), who's now Doom's employee and love interest; and her hotshot-pilot brother, Johnny Storm ! (Chris Evans, Cellular). Things don't go as planned, of! course, and the quartet becomes blessed--or is it cursed?--with superhuman powers: flexibility, brute strength, invisibility and projecting force fields, and bursting into flame. Meanwhile, Doom himself is undergoing a transformation.
Among the many entries in the comic-book-movie frenzy, Fantastic Four is refreshing because it doesn't take itself too seriously. Characterization isn't too deep, and the action is a bit sparse until the final reel (like most "first" superhero movies, it has to go through the "how did we get these powers and what we will do with them" churn). But it's a good-looking cast, and original comic-book cocreator Stan Lee makes his most significant Marvel-movie cameo yet, in a speaking role as the FF's steadfast postal carrier, Willie Lumpkin. Newcomers to superhero movies might find the idea of a family with flexibility, strength, invisibility, and force fields a retread of The Incredibles, but Pixar's animated film was very much a tr! ibute to the FF and other heroes of the last 40 years. The irony is that while Fantastic Four is an enjoyable B-grade movie, it's the tribute, The Incredibles, that turned out to be a film for the ages. --David Horiuchi

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is another entertaining romp for the Marvel-superhero franchise. Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd), is treading on thin ice when his fiancée, Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba), thinks he's more interested in a series of cosmic phenomena occurring around the earth than in the preparations for their upcoming wedding. Sorry, ladies, but Reed is right. The disturbances are caused by a surge of cosmic power from a mysterious being called the Silver Surfer (an all-CGI creation, modeled by Doug Jones and voiced by Laurence Fishburne), who not only zooms around the skies on his board, but also has enough p! ower to fight the FF, sometimes by turning their own power aga! inst the m, not only mixing up Sue and Reed, but also Johnny Storm, the Human Torch (Chris Evans), and Ben Grimm, the Thing (Michael Chiklis). But that's not the worst of it. The Surfer is only an opening act, a herald looking for planets that his master, Galactus, can consume for his sustenance.
With its initial installment, Fantastic Four established itself as the superhero franchise that didn't take itself too seriously, and that continues here. There are numerous moments of laugh-out-loud humor, and the most angst they suffer is whether Sue and Reed will ever be able to live a normal family life. (That, and whether they'll ever really get married, of course.) If Fantastic Four were a normal superhero franchise, the ending would be a knock-down drag-out war with Galactus, featuring the FF in a colossal battle for the planet Earth and the lives of everyone on it. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer just doesn't do that, and we don't quite get the payof! f we expected. Effects are dazzling, but the Surfer looks too metallic, more like a skyriding T-1000 robot. --David Horiuchi

X-men: The Last Stand
X-Men: The Last Stand is the third installment in the popular superhero franchise, and it's an exciting one with a splash of fresh new characters. When a scientist named Warren Worthington II announces a "cure" for mutant powers, it raises an interesting philosophical question: is mutant power a disease that needs a cure, or is it a benefit that homo superior enjoys over "normal" human beings? No surprise that Magneto (Ian McKellen) and his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants resist the idea that they need to be cured, and declare war on the human race. But it's a little tougher for the X-Men, led by Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Cyclops (James Marsden), and Storm (Halle Berry). If you're Rogue (Anna Paquin), for example, your power means you can't even touch your boyfriend, Iceman (Shawn Ashmore). To c! ompound matters, someone previously thought dead has returned,! and mig ht be either friend or foe.
With director Bryan Singer having moved on to Superman Returns, the franchise passes to the hands of Brett Ratner (Rush Hour), whose best work is done in the big action sequences such as a showdown between mutant armies. But it's difficult to manage the sheer volume of characters when adding longtime comic-book stalwarts such as Beast (Kelsey Grammer) and Angel (Ben Foster), and one character in particular deserved better than an off-screen dismissal. And fans of the original Dark Phoenix comic book story might be underwhelmed by the movie's resolution. X-Men: The Last Stand is presumably the last film in the series, but the ambiguous ending leaves possibilities open. Look for the two writers most responsible for making the X-Men who they were, Stan Lee and Chris Claremont, in early cameos. --David Horiuchi

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B.A.P.S.

• Can two clueless Georgia homegirls with big hearts -- and even bigger hair -- find happiness, fame and thrills in the swank hills of Beverly? Anything is possible when you are B.A.P.'sRunning Time: 91 min. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG-13 Age: 794043692529 UPC: 794043692529 Manufacturer No: N6925

Can two clueless Georgia homegirls with big hearts -- and even bigger hair -- find happiness, fame and thrills in the swank hills of Beverly? Anything is possible when you are B.A.P.'sWhat was director Robert Townsend thinking? His movies, such as The Five Heartbeats and The Hollywood Shuffle, are sweet, enjoyable little pictures. But this "comedy" about two flashy Georgia women hoping to find money and men in Los Angeles is stereotypical, unfunny, embarrassing, and boring. Halle Berry and newcomer Natalie Desselle are trapped in pitiful roles playing against the disti! nguished but miscast Martin Landau and a wasted Ian Richardson. B.A.P.S., by the way, stands for black American princesses. There are better urban comedies out there, the badly named Booty Call for one. --Rochelle O'Gorman

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Awake

• Awake turns the disturbingly real phenomenon of anesthetic awareness - in which surgery patients, through completely paralyzed, are conscious of everything they are experiencing, including the pain - into a "completely absorbing" thriller (Roger Ebert). When failed anesthesia leaves a rich young tycoon (Hayden Christensen, Star Wars) alert but immobilized during open heart surgery, he over

AWAKE is a sexy, psychological thriller about a common occurrence called "anesthetic awareness" a horrifying phenomenon wherein a patient's failed anesthesia leaves him fully conscious but physically paralyzed during surgery. The patient's charming new wife is forced to struggle with her own demons as a terrifying drama unfolds around the couple.There's a hint of classic noir in the twists and turns that make up Awake, a medical thriller that hinges on an alarming real-life condition known as anesth! esia awareness, which keeps surgery patients awake but immobile during surgery. Hayden Christensen is top-billed as the scion of a wealthy banking family in desperate need of a heart transplant. Seconds after the operation commences, he discovers that he is fully conscious, yet unable to move; and what's worse, the entire procedure is slated to fail in order to claim his considerable fortune. Once the scheme is set in motion, Awake moves into high gear, and the stock characters established in the exposition-heavy opening show their true (and decidedly scurrilous) colors. Unfortunately, the suspense is undone by Christensen undergoing what appears to be a confusing out-of-body experience, and a conclusion that begs for more suspension of disbelief than most audiences will be able to summon up. Christensen and Jessica Alba (as his new bride) are attractive but bland; instead, it's Howard who delivers as the film's conflicted antihero. The supporting players, including ! Lena Olin as Christensen's overprotective mom, Christopher McD! onald, a nd Arliss Howard also lend considerable credence to the material. -- Paul Gaita

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Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh

• BLESSED IS THE MATCH (DVD MOVIE)

In 1944, 22-year-old Hannah Senesh parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe with a small group of Jewish volunteers from Palestine. Theirs was the only military rescue mission for Jews that occurred in World War II.

Narrated by Academy Award® winner Joan Allen, the multi-award-winning BLESSED IS THE MATCH follows the remarkable journey of this young Hungarian poet and diarist, paratrooper and resistance fighter. Told through Hannah s letters, diaries, and poems, her mother s memoirs, and the recollections of those who knew and loved her (including two of her fellow parachutists), the film traces her life from her childhood in Budapest to her time in British-controlled Palestine where she was drawn by the Kibbutz Movement that sought to build an independent Jewish state to her daring mission to rescue Jews in her native Hungary.

Both devastating an! d inspiring, BLESSED IS THE MATCH offers an intimate portrait of a singularly talented, courageous and complex girl who believed that one person could be a flame that burns brightly in even the darkest hours.This harrowing documentary by director Roberta Grossman is like any meaningful history lesson about the Holocaust: extremely sad to watch but absolutely necessary. Pieced together from Hannah Senesh's letters and poems, and her mother's memoir, this very tragic story is narrated by Joan Allen, which is only the first great thing about this film. Blessed Is the Match tells the tale of national heroine and martyr Hannah Senesh, who embarked on a deadly mission from her kibbutz in Palestine to save Hungarian Jews from extermination. Still photos of Senesh's family are interwoven with interviews with everyone from her nephews to her prison cellmate, Vera Latjai, to her fellow parachutist, Surika Braverman, to Shimon Peres, the president of Israel. A painfully clear! picture is painted of how brave and generous this young girl ! of 22 mu st have been to have enrolled in the British Army as one of three women who parachuted into Yugoslavia to infiltrate German-occupied Hungary. The film traces her childhood in Budapest, marking important turning points in which Senesh dedicated her life to writing poetry. Even in the first grade, upon the death of her father, this precocious girl dictated elegiac poetry to her grandmother. While many documentaries drag on in childhood sections that feel irrelevant to the larger story, Blessed Is the Match uses this time wisely. Leading up to 1938, when Senesh decides to leave her mother behind for Palestine, one learns how anti-Semitism informed her morality and fortified her dedication to the Jewish people. With more frequency, the voices of Hannah (Meri Roth), mother Catherine (Marcela Nohynkova), and brother Giora (Zdenek Kozakovic) replace the narrator's as the story of Hannah's short time in Europe grows increasingly dire. Moving and still images of the Polish a! nd Hungarian ghettos spliced in here make one feel the urgency of Senesh's mission to save her mother. As letters are read back and forth between them, and the film spends its latter third focusing on their prison time together, there are moments that seem nearly unbearable. However, Hannah Senesh is called Israel's Joan of Arc for a reason. This film honors her having become a symbol of persistence and hope, and in this, many of her simple, yet beautiful patriotic poems are read throughout to strong effect. Blessed Is the Match is a challenging, comprehensive look at the power of the individual and transcends war story to remind one of how caring humans do much to counteract atrocity. --Trinie Dalton

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The Last Song

• LAST SONG (DVD MOVIE)

John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill and Oscar® Winner Marisa Tomei star in this quirky, hilarious story about love, family and cutting the cord. Not-so-recently divorced John (Reilly) thinks he’s finally found the perfect woman when he meets the sweet and sexy Molly (Tomei). There’s just one problem â€" Molly’s son Cyrus (Hill) clings to his mom like lint on a T-shirt, and he’s not about to let another man come between them. It’s one hysterically awkward moment after another as John and Cyrus fight for the right to be Molly’s #1 man. Mumblecore auteurs the Duplass brothers (Baghead, The Puffy Chair) dip their toes in the precarious waters of Hollywood by casting well-known actors in Cyrus. But their devotion to clumsy, uncomfortable people remains: John (John C. Reilly, Step Brothers) has barely left his apartment in the seven years sinc! e Jamie (Catherine Keener, Lovely & Amazing) divorced him, so Jamie demands he come to a party--where, miraculously, he meets Molly (Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler), who seems like the woman of his dreams. Unfortunately, Molly comes with some baggage: her 22-year-old son, Cyrus (Jonah Hill, Superbad). To say Molly and Cyrus are close is an understatement, and John finds himself in a battle of wills with Molly as the prize. The Duplass brothers seek a kind of cinematic simplicity--to call it purity would be too highbrow for these aggressively pedestrian filmmakers--and when it works, it brings the viewer in intimate contact with life in its ordinary, essential glory. When it doesn't work, it's just dull. Despite its flatfooted plot, Cyrus works pretty well. The higher caliber of the cast helps--Reilly, Tomei, Hill, and Keener are all excellent, and much of the movie is genuinely funny. Don't expect elegance, but sometimes, something plain can please. ! --Bret FetzerAmbitious television reporter Maria Sanche! z (Danie lle Harris of Rob Zombie's Halloween, Hatchet 2) is investigating the disappearance of over 200 Midwestern University students when a local man (Lance Henriksen of Aliens) contacts her with information that reveals details of the serial killer and his crimes: His name is Cyrus (a chilling performance by Brian Krause of ''Charmed'') and the murders themselves were brutal. What happened next was horrific but the worst is still to come. Based on shocking true events, this bloody and brutal story of the 'The County Line Cannibal' will leave a taste in your mouth that you'll never forget.John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill and Oscar® Winner Marisa Tomei star in this quirky, hilarious story about love, family and cutting the cord. Not-so-recently divorced John (Reilly) thinks he’s finally found the perfect woman when he meets the sweet and sexy Molly (Tomei). There’s just one problem â€" Molly’s son Cyrus (Hill) clings to his mom like lint on a T-shirt, and he’s not about to let a! nother man come between them. It’s one hysterically awkward moment after another as John and Cyrus fight for the right to be Molly’s #1 man. Mumblecore auteurs the Duplass brothers (Baghead, The Puffy Chair) dip their toes in the precarious waters of Hollywood by casting well-known actors in Cyrus. But their devotion to clumsy, uncomfortable people remains: John (John C. Reilly, Step Brothers) has barely left his apartment in the seven years since Jamie (Catherine Keener, Lovely & Amazing) divorced him, so Jamie demands he come to a party--where, miraculously, he meets Molly (Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler), who seems like the woman of his dreams. Unfortunately, Molly comes with some baggage: her 22-year-old son, Cyrus (Jonah Hill, Superbad). To say Molly and Cyrus are close is an understatement, and John finds himself in a battle of wills with Molly as the prize. The Duplass brothers seek a kind of cinematic simplicity--to c! all it purity would be too highbrow for these aggressively ped! estrian filmmakers--and when it works, it brings the viewer in intimate contact with life in its ordinary, essential glory. When it doesn't work, it's just dull. Despite its flatfooted plot, Cyrus works pretty well. The higher caliber of the cast helps--Reilly, Tomei, Hill, and Keener are all excellent, and much of the movie is genuinely funny. Don't expect elegance, but sometimes, something plain can please. --Bret FetzerMiley Cyrus shines as the star of this heartwarming coming-of-age movie that will strike your emotional chords. Based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks (Dear John, The Notebook), The Last Song follows Ronnie (Cyrus) and her estranged father as he tries to restore the loving relationship they once had. But reconnecting with his rebellious daughter isn’t easy, so he chooses the one thing they still have in common â€" music. Complete with not-to-be-missed bonus features â€" the Miley Cyrus music video “When I Look At You,” exclusive interviews with t! he actress and more â€" this uplifting and touching drama about family, first loves and second chances is a heartfelt story to you won’t soon forget.
This romantic tearjerker from writer Nicholas Sparks (Dear John, The Notebook) can be formulaic at times, but it stays interesting thanks to pacing and snappy dialogue. Miley Cyrus sulks through The Last Song as troubled teen Ronnie, who resents her father (Greg Kinnear) for divorcing Mom (Kelly Preston) and leaving the family. A piano prodigy, Ronnie refuses to play after her father leaves, and she snubs admission to Julliard. Ronnie and her wisecracking brother Jonah (Bobby Coleman) are sent to spend the summer with their father in a small Georgia beach town. Handsome townie Will (Liam Hemsworth) strikes up a tense relationship with Ronnie and, true to romance formula, they fall in love. Ronnie softens her attitude and the ice between father and daughter begins to melt away. But Dad has a tragic s! ecret, and in the end, music helps Ronnie open her heart and h! eal. Cyr us gives a predictable performance as the all-attitude Ronnie, but she's helped along by Coleman's cute-little-brother shtick (which can be a bit heavy-handed, but the youngster is a scene-stealer). Veteran actors Preston and Kinnear are one-dimensional, but The Last Song is a harmless teen romance--who's watching the adults, anyway? --Francine Ruley

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Harvard Beats Yale 29-29

• Harvard Stadium November 23, 1968. With Vietnam raging, Nixon in theWhite House, and issues from civil rights to women's lib dividing thecountry, Harvard and Yale, both teams undefeated for the first time since1909, meet for the annual climax of the Ivy League football season. On theblue-blooded Yale campus, gridiron fever has made local celebrities out of aYale team led by quarterback Brian Dowli

An incredible true story that unfolds like a ripping good yarn... With an uproarious, impossible Hollywood ending (Andrew O Hehir, Salon.com), Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 is filmmaker Kevin Rafferty s (The Atomic Cafe) acclaimed documentary depicting one of the most legendary games in the history of sports. Harvard Stadium November 23, 1968. With Vietnam raging, Nixon in the White House, and issues from civil rights to women's lib dividing the country, Harvard and Yale, both teams undefeated for the fi! rst time since 1909, meet for the annual climax of the Ivy League football season. On the blue-blooded Yale campus, gridiron fever has made local celebrities out of a Yale team led by quarterback Brian Dowling, who hadn t lost a game that he finished since the 7th grade, and who was the role model for Doonesbury s B.D. At civil unrest scarred Harvard, a melting pot team of working class players, antiwar activists, and a decorated Vietnam vet set aside their differences for the Big Game. Together, Yale and Harvard stage an unforgettable football contest that baffled even their own coaches. Using vintage game footage and bracingly honest contemporary interviews with the players from both sides, including Harvard lineman and future Oscar® winner Tommy Lee Jones (No Country for Old Men), Rafferty crafts an alternately suspenseful, hilarious, and poignant portrait of American lives, American sports, and American ideals both tested on the playing field and transformed by turbule! nt times.

Special Features:
- Bonus Interviews (73 m! in.) Add itional interview excerpts not included in the film, the players provide a deeper look at the season, the game, and its aftermath.
- Theatrical Trailer

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Black Irish

• ISBN13: 9780595430802
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

West Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1981. Tensions between Catholics and Protestants have never been higher. The IRA Hunger Strikes are in full swing, and violence continues to spread in Belfast. While working in their parents’ grocery store, two young Catholic twins, Vincent and Michael Logan, witness their father’s brutal murder by British commandos.

This horrific crime sends the twins on radically opposing paths.

As they reach adulthood, Vincent embarks on a journey for justice and becomes a cop. Michael, still simmering over his father’s murder, is out for revenge and soon becomes the IRA’s most feared assassin. When Michael discovers that his father’s killer has! just become the most powerful man in Europe, he plots his revenge. But there’s one man standing in his way, one he used to call brother …

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Moneymakers: The Wicked Lives and Surprising Adventures of Three Notorious Counterfeiters

• ISBN13: 9781594202872
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

In 1695, Isaac Newton—already renowned as the greatest mind of his age—made a surprising career change. He left quiet Cambridge, where he had lived for thirty years and made his earth-shattering discoveries, and moved to London to take up the post of Warden of His Majesty’s Mint.

 

Newton was preceded to the city by a genius of another kind, the budding criminal William Chaloner. Thanks to his preternatural skills as a counterfeiter, Chaloner was rapidly rising in London’s highly competitive underworld, at a time when organized law enforcement was all but unknown and money in the modern sense was just coming into being. Then he crossed paths with the formidabl! e new warden. In the courts and streets of London—and amid the tremors of a world being transformed by the ideas Newton himself had set in motion—the chase was on. This revelatory tale of Isaac Newton’s journey through London’s underworld will appeal to fans of The Professor and the Madman.

Product Description
In 1695, Isaac Newton--already renowned as the greatest mind of his age--made a surprising career change. He left quiet Cambridge, where he had lived for thirty years and made his earth-shattering discoveries, and moved to London to take up the post of Warden of His Majesty's Mint. Newton was preceded to the city by a genius of another kind, the budding criminal William Chaloner. Thanks to his preternatural skills as a counterfeiter, Chaloner was rapidly rising in London's highly competitive underworld, at a time when organized law enforcement was all but unknown and money in the modern sense was just coming into being.! Then he crossed paths with the formidable new warden. In the ! courts a nd streets of London--and amid the tremors of a world being transformed by the ideas Newton himself had set in motion--the two played out an epic game of cat and mouse.

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A Q&A with Thomas Levenson, Author of Newton and the Counterfeiter

Q: Why did you decide to write Newton and the Counterfeiter?

A: I first encountered the connection at the heart of Newton and the Counterfeiter when I was working on a very different project in the mid '90s. A long out of print book quoted from one of the few letters between my counterfeiter, William Chaloner, and Isaac Newton--and on reading it I wondered: what on earth was such a scoundrel doing in correspondence with the greatest mind of the age? The question stuck with ! me for a decade, and finally I made the time to dig a little deeper. Once I did, I discovered two things that made this book both possible, and from a writer's point of view, inescapable. The first was a trove of original documents that chronicled Newton's involvement in the pursuit and prosecution of not just Chaloner, but dozens of other currency criminals. The second was the insight this one story gives into Newton himself--and of the real extent and impact of the revolutions (plural deliberate) which he so prominently led. Isaac Newton is best remembered, of course, as the man at the vanguard of the scientific revolution--a status established by his discoveries: the laws of motion, gravity, the calculus, and much more. But I found that this story gave me a sense of what it was like to live through that revolution at street level. It provided an example of Newton's mind at work, for one, and for another, it involved Newton in the second of the great 17th century transfo! rmations, the financial revolution that occurred in conjunctio! n, and w ith some connection to the scientific one.

Newton, I found, was a bureaucrat, a man with a job running England's money supply at a time with surprising parallels to our own: new, poorly understood financial engineering to deal with what was a national currency and economic crisis. He was asked to think about money, and he did--and at the same time, he was given the job of Warden of the Mint, which among other duties put him charge of policing those who would fake or undermine the King's coins. So there I had it: a gripping true crime story, with life-and-death stakes and enough information to follow my leading characters through the bad streets and worse jails of London--and one that at the same time let me explore some of critical moves in the making of the world we inhabit through the mind and feelings of perhaps the greatest scientific thinker who ever lived. How could I resist that?

Q: Are there comparisons to be made to the financial times ! we are living in today in this country?

A: When I started writing this book, (c. 2005) the American and the global economy was seemingly in robust health. The American housing market was booming; financial markets the world over were trading happily back and forth, the Dow in June, when I started working in earnest on the project, stood comfortably over 10,000, with a 40% rise to come through the first and second drafts of the work. And then, of course, things changed--and by that time (too late to do my own financial situation any good) I realized that in the story of Newton's confrontation with Chaloner I could see many of the pathologies that define our current predicament. England's currency and its system of high finance--the big loans and big banks behind them needed to fund government--were both under increasing strain when Newton arrived at the Mint.

Part of the damage was being done through imbalances of trade, as silver flowed out of! England to the European continent and ultimately to India and! China. (Sound familiar?) That loss of metal had huge economic consequences when you remember that money itself was made of silver back then. No silver, no coins. No coins--and how are you going to buy a loaf of bread, a pound of beef, a barrel of beer (which was a staple, and not a luxury given the state of London’s drinking (sic) water). At the same time, England was waging a war it could not pay for. (Sound familiar?) The Treasury was broke. Financial engineering got its start in the ever more desperate attempts by the government to raise the money it needed to keep its army in the field against France. Newton and his counterfeiting nemesis William Chaloner both found themselves operating on unfamiliar territory, with paper abstractions standing in for what used to be literally hard cash. This was when bank notes were invented--and Chaloner forged some. This was when the government began to issue what were in essence bonds--and Chaloner forged some of those too. Personal chequ! es were coming in, and--you guessed it--Chaloner passed a couple of duds. Most significantly, the Bank of England invented fractional reserve lending--lending out a multiple of the actual cash reserves it held at any one time. This was the birth of leverage. Put it all together and you have most of the crucial ideas in modern finance appearing at almost the same instant. These are fantastically useful tools; the enormous expansion of wealth, of material comfort, of human well being that we’ve seen over the last three centuries, derives in part from the fact that the English and their trading counterparties were so impressively inventive in those decades. But at the same time, as we know now all too well, each and every one of those financial ideas are capable of abuse. Now add to the usual temptations to financial sin the besetting danger of ignorance, of the sheer unfamiliarity of the new instruments, and you have the makings of an almost inevitable disaster.

! In 2009, we are dealing with that double trouble: deliberate ! frauds c ombining with the larger problem that the complexity and sheer deep strangeness of new financial products allowed a lot of so-called smart money to make big bets they didn’t understand. Exactly the same kinds of pressures were building in Newton's day, and the financial crisis that Newton helped resolve in the 1690s kept spawning sequels, until in the 1720s, Newton himself got caught up in a disaster that in many ways eerily anticipates the one we are living through now. The South Sea Bubble of 1720 was born of a good idea--what we would now call a debt-for-equity swap--but rapidly turned into a fraud and then at the last a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme. What I found most striking is that Newton, who of all men had the mathematical chops to figure out that the South Sea promises couldn't possibly be met, still got sucked in by the promise of outsize returns. Avarice, desire, or perhaps in Newton's case just the agony of the thought that others were getting richer while he was ! not, propelled him into investing in the bubble at its very peak. According to his niece, he lost 20,000 pounds in a matter of months--which in today’s money would be roughly three million pounds, or close to five million dollars. The moral, at least the lesson I took from this personally? No one, not even Newton, and certainly not me, is smart enough to be smarter than one's own emotions. And that grim fact, as much as any specific financial innovation, lies behind our current economic woes, and surely caught that great thinker Isaac Newton in its grip as well.

Q: Tell us about your research.

A: I was fortunate in this project--in fact, I only took on the book--because there was a rich lode of little-known documents that told the story of the clash between Newton and Chaloner. Five large folders survive of Newton's own notes, drafts and memos covering his official duties at the Mint. Examining them, especially drafts of replies to som! e of Chaloner's most audacious attacks on him at Parliamentary! hearing s, it is possible to see across time to Newton's mounting frustration and anger at his antagonist: his handwriting gets worse, more cramped, swift, and in general ticked off as he works through his responses. I was also able to find the handful of documents that can be unequivocally attributed to Chaloner: a couple of pamphlets he had printed to display his expertise in the making and manipulation of coin, and to allege incompetence, or worse at Newton's Mint. To that I added a marvelous, if not entirely reliable, moralizing biography of Chaloner, hastily written and published within days of his execution. That was one of the early examples of what became a staple pulp genre--edifying and titillating accounts of the wicked, in which any admiration for the rascals being chronicled were carefully wrapped up through the appropriate bad ends to which all the subjects of such works were doomed.

But of all the wellsprings of this book, none were more important than the ! file it took me over a year to find. I knew that some of the records Isaac Newton's criminal interrogations survived, because I found reference to them in a couple of the older biographies and other secondary sources. But in the reorganization of British official records that took place in the decades after World War II, the cataloguing systems for Mint files had undergone enough changes that this crucial set of documents had slipped out of sight of the contemporary Newton scholarly community. I managed to track it down to its current location in the Public Records Office, and then I had writer's gold: more than four hundred separate documents, most countersigned by Newton himself, that allowed me to retrace his steps as a criminal investigator informer by informer. Most fortunately--Newton’s nephew-in-law reported that he helped his wife's uncle burn many of his Mint interrogation records. But the entire Chaloner case remained in the one surviving folder, and it made for! fascinating, gripping reading. Once Newton realized how formi! dable an opponent he had in Chaloner, he proved relentless in reconstructing not just particular crimes, but the whole architecture of counterfeiting and coining as it was practiced in London in the 1690s. You get to see, smell, hear how the bad guys worked, in their own words, as elicited by a man who (surprise!) proved to be exceptionally good at extracting the evidence he needed to solve a problem.

(Photo © Joel Benjamin)

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Art Williams was a precocious student with a bright future, but his dreams shattered when his father abandoned the family and his bipolar mother lost her wits. Living in one of Chicago’s worst housing projects, Williams was breaking open parking meters at age twelve and by his mid-teens he was robbing drug dealers. His quest for both a father figure and stable income would merge at the age of sixteen, when a criminal master nicknamed “Da Vinci” taught him the centuries-old art of counterfeit! ing. Following a stint in prison, Williams returned to society to find that the Treasury Department had issued the most secure hundred-dollar bill ever created: the 1996 New Note. He spent months trying to circumvent its security features before arriving at a bill so perfect that even law enforcement had difficulty distinguishing it from the real thing. Williams went on to print millions in counterfeit, selling it to criminal organizations and using it to fund cross-country spending sprees. Spending his fake money as quickly as he could print it but still unsatisfied, he dropped everything to track down his long-lost father in the wilds of Alaska, setting in motion a chain of betrayals that would be his undoing. The Art of Making Money is a stirring portrait of the rise and inevitable fall of a modern-day criminal mastermind.A young artist pursues a search for knowledge through the treatment of homosexuality and the collapse of morality in middle class France.The l! ively and enthralling tale of three notorious counterfeiters o! ffers in sights into the makings of the American financial mind.

In Moneymakers, Ben Tarnoff chronicles the lives of three colorful counterfeiters who flourished in early America, shedding fresh light on the country's financial coming of age. The speculative ethos that pervades Wall Street today, Tarnoff suggests, has its origins in the craft of counterfeiters who first took advantage of a turbulent American economy.

Few nations have as rich a counterfeiting history as the United States. Since the colonies suffered from a chronic shortage of precious metals, they were the first place in the Western world to use easily forged paper bills. And until the national currency was standardized in the last half of the nineteenth century, the United States had a dizzying variety of banknotes, making early America a counterfeiter's paradise.

In Moneymakers, Tarnoff recounts how three of America's most successful counterfeiters-Owen Sullivan, David L! ewis, and Samuel Upham- each cunningly manipulated the political and economic realities of his day, driven by a desire for fortune and fame. Irish immigrant Owen Sullivan (c. 1720-1756) owed his success not just to his hustler's charm and entrepreneurial spirit, but also to the weak law enforcement and craving for currency that marked colonial America. The handsome David Lewis (1788-1820) became an outlaw hero in backwoods Pennsylvania, infamous for his audacious jailbreaks and admired as a Robin Hood figure who railed against Eastern financial elites. Shopkeeper Samuel Upham (1819-1885) sold fake Confederate bills to his fellow Philadelphians during the Civil War as "mementos of the rebellion," enraging Southern leaders when Union soldiers flooded their markets with the forgeries.

Through the tales of these three memorable counterfeiters, Moneymakers spins the larger story of America's financial ups and downs during its infancy and adolescence, tracing its ! evolution from a patchwork of colonies to a powerful nation wi! th a sin gle currency. It was only toward the end of the Civil War that a strengthened federal government created the Secret Service to police counterfeiting, finally bringing the quintessentially American pursuit to an end. But as Tarnoff suggests in this highly original financial history, the legacy of early American counterfeiters lives on in the get-rich-quick culture we see on Wall Street today.

Author Q&A with Ben Tarnoff

Q: Can you explain the significance of the title Moneymakers?

A: “Moneymaker” was the colonial word for counterfeiter. When Owen Sullivan, the first counterfeiter profiled in my book, gets into a drunken fight with his wife in Boston in 1749, she calls him a “forty-thousand-po! und moneymaker.” The neighbors overhear this remark and tell the police, who discover fake bills and printing materials at Sullivan’s house and arrest him. I liked the word “moneymaker” because it’s so literal: of all the ways to acquire money, only “moneymaking” involved actually manufacturing it. A disgruntled silversmith could disappear for a week and return richer than the city’s wealthiest merchant. Getting rich quick inspired as much awe and envy back then as it does today. For those riches to be fabricated by hand, and not earned the old-fashioned way, made counterfeiting seem like magic. It’s easy to see why counterfeiters became the outlaw celebrities of their day. They embodied the enduring fantasy of instant wealth. Their fortunes were, in every sense, self-made.

Q: What initially drew you to the topic of counterfeiting?

A: When I started reading about the subject, I became fascinated with the stories of the in! dividual counterfeiters. Very few began as professional crimin! als. Mos t started out as craftsmen: silversmiths or engravers, usually. Creating a plate for printing counterfeit bills required tremendous dexterity. The success of an entire operation essentially rested on one pair of hands. So counterfeiters tended to be talented artistsâ€"but they were also aggressively entrepreneurial. They needed to think on several levels: quality of the craftsmanship wasn’t the only factor determining the success of a counterfeiting enterprise. There was the sale of the notes themselves, whether to regional distributors or to gangs of “passers.” There was the geographical question of which communities to target. Perhaps most importantly, counterfeiters had to elude law enforcement and, as their notoriety grew, the prospect of lifetime imprisonment or execution. For these reasons they came to understand the political and economic landscape of early America far better than most criminals of the era.

Q: Do you think your book has special! relevance today?

A: The financial crisis reminded us how rapidly wealth can evaporate. It reminded us that, despite huge advances in technology, we still live in a very precarious system. What Moneymakers brings into focus is that financial volatility hasn’t been the exception in American history: it’s been the rule. It’s tempting to think of our economic trajectory as one continuous ascent since the 18th century. But America’s path to prosperity has been anything but linear: it’s run from boom and bust, through wars and political upheavals, and impoverished people at least as often as it’s enriched them. Men and women two hundred years ago were not substantially different from us. They were just as delusional about the prospect of inexhaustible growth in the 19th century as we were in the early part of the 21stâ€"and just as shocked and angry when those delusions gave way. Of course, many specific circumstances have changed since then.! Counterfeiters were once ubiquitous in American life; today, ! they’v e virtually disappeared. Until the final decades of the 19th century, counterfeiters provided a significant portion of the nation’s money supply, feeding America’s addiction to paper credit with fresh infusions of fake currency. These days, counterfeit bills account for a negligible portion of the total in circulation. But though physical counterfeiting has declined, the spirit of counterfeiting endures. Counterfeiters’ core insight was that confidence creates value. If a paper rectangle carried the right marks in the right places, and the person holding it appeared trustworthy, then it became valuable. Much of today’s financial trickery proceeds from the same principle.

Q: What surprised you most while researching and writing?

A: There was a lot that surprised me. Maybe the most surprising single fact was how many different private paper currencies circulated in the United States before the Civil War. I’d thought we’d always had ! a single federal currency, but it wasn’t until the 1860s that it became politically possible for Congress to phase out the bills of some sixteen hundred state banks and replace them with national notes. More surprising than this, however, was how long the American people enduredâ€"and in many cases, endorsedâ€"a system with so many evident flaws. From the Revolution until the Civil War, they dealt with hundreds, and eventually thousands, of different banknotes, each fluctuating in value. They were victimized by predatory lenders, speculators, and a banking sector that swung from prosperity to panic, with devastating effects. The federal government could’ve stepped in to simplify and stabilize this state of affairs. But the American people generally resisted the idea of a federal government powerful enough to make meaningful interventions in the economy and the currency, even if it would be to their benefit. The resistance to federal power was rooted in a particular inte! rpretation of the Constitution and a long legacy of limited go! vernment . It led people to act against their economic self-interest, en masse and for long periods of time. Outdated notions of proper governance proved remarkably persistent, even when modern circumstances demanded something very different.

Q: Your book focuses on three counterfeiters. What made you decide on these people in particular?

A: With this subject there’s no shortage of colorful characters and engaging anecdotes. But I wanted to focus on people who, in some way, illustrated the story of America’s financial evolution. These three men stood out because they intersected with the broader currents of their respective eras in exceptionally interesting ways. They were each active at moments of major change in the American monetary landscape. For example, Owen Sullivan launched his counterfeiting career in 1749, the same year that the Massachusetts legislature passed a highly controversial bill phasing out the colony’s paper currency within ! the next two years. Decades later, David Lewis picked a similarly momentous time: just as the rapid proliferation of note-issuing banks flooded the early United States with new bills, with obvious benefits for counterfeiters. Samuel Upham took advantage of the unique circumstances brought about by the Civil War. He forged Confederate money with impunity from the safety of Philadelphia, peddling his fakes openly to soldiers and smugglers headed South. Sullivan, Lewis, and Upham gave me a way to connect the story of American counterfeiting with the story of America as a whole.

Q: What did you learn about America through writing this book? What did you learn about Americans?

A: When you write history, you begin to see a lot of common ground between the past and the present. Almost every day, I would encounter a fact or a story that called to mind current events. America may look a lot different in 2010 than it did in 1690-1865, which is roughl! y the period covered by my book. But there are certain resonan! ces. One theme that seems to have persisted, despite the major realignments of the last century, is the notion of getting “something for nothing.” America’s first settlers thought of this country as a blank: “vacuum domicilium,” in John Winthrop’s words, or vacant land. This was a fantasy, of course: the land wasn’t vacant, and clearing it involved a centuries-long struggle. But the idea of forging value in a void remained a powerful one.

Paper money belongs to this tradition. It makes something out of nothing by investing an otherwise worthless material with monetary value typically reserved for gold or silver. In fact, the American colonies were the first governments in the Western world to print paper currency. The notes first appeared in 1690 in response to the severe shortage of precious metals that plagued colonial life. Faced with a scarcity of coin, colonial America needed a way to fund wars and collect taxes and conduct trade: more broadly, it n! eeded a way to convert the ambitions of its inhabitants into real economic growth. Paper currency met that need. It provided a country with few natural resources and little political or economic leverage the fuel to colonize an entire continent. Our economy ran on paper promises that, in many cases, couldn’t be keptâ€"yet our collective faith in these promises helped produce real things, like canals and railroads. By postponing the present in anticipation of the future, paper promises helped America grow.

Q: Did you develop a new appreciation or understanding of the American economy through writing this book?

A: Our economy has grown so much in scale and sophistication that it’s hard to draw exact parallels. But there are certain patterns that feel very familiar. In the book I write a lot about confidence. It sustains the economy by underpinning the value of our currency; it also enriched counterfeiters over the centuries, who grew very ad! ept at cultivating it. In the period covered by the book, Amer! icans te nded to have a confidence problem: they either had too much of it, taking risks as everything surged, or too little, fleeing the market as everything crumbled. As long as everyone believed something had valueâ€"whether a piece of colonial money or a stock certificateâ€"it did. But when that faith faltered, mistrust spread throughout the system, triggering a panic. The essential features of our most recent crisis would be familiar to people living through the Panics of 1819 or 1837 or any of the several subsequent disruptions in the following decades. The issue of how crises are created is very contentious, and I’ve tried to be careful about not drawing unfair comparisons. Without diminishing the complexity of the debate, though, there are fascinating convergences between past and present when it comes to America’s turbulent finances.

Q: What do you hope readers take away?

A: I think the most exciting thing about history is that it’s ! filled with real people. They felt pain when they lost their life savings in financial panics. They argued bitterly about the role of government in the economy, just as bitterly as we do today. The more time I spend reading about the past, the more I’m reminded of people I know today. The correspondences aren’t perfect, but enough of them exist to suggest human that nature hasn’t changed much in the last three centuries. If there’s a larger lesson to the book, that might be it.

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