Pleasure readers of the world, en garde! Despite a juicy Hollywood Babylon-ish jacket and subtitle, this scholarly history of the Left's 30-year contribution to Hollywood is the kind of book that will curve the spine of many a vexed undergrad. Only slightly easier to read than The Communist Manifesto, it tracks major lefties without etching compelling biographical portraits, and it runs through countless films as incessantly as the Leonard Maltin guide. The arguments the book does make — for one, that film noir was the genre most conducive to the Left's worldview — would be more enticing if the writing weren't so dry. C
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