The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: The Gangster Film

Rating:
Summary: Good, though poorly organized.
Review: At once, this book is amazing in its scope but horribly frustrating in its approach. Unlike a conventional encyclopedia, this voluminous tome orders the films within by year rather than alphabetically. This system makes the book virtually useless when trying to find a particular film at a glance. Sure, there's always the index but that fails miserably when a reader has interest in a film with a foreign title. Translated titles are available in the index, but too many foreign films have multiple titles. To make things worse the index is bereft of directors, stars, or any other means of cross-referencing a movie with which the reader might not be fully familiar. This is a flawed and ultimately ineffective work. (ISBN: 0879518812)