Although it's a thick book and does contain paragraphs that are just lists of film titles, Cook's narrative proceeds smoothly and you can certainly read it cover to cover, skipping those paragraphs if you're uninterested. Like any atlas, it's an overview-you'll have to look elsewhere for topographic maps and street-level views of the Czech New Wave, Cinema Novo, French Poetic Realism or whatever happens to catch your eye-but it grounds every movement in the history of both its national cinema and the historical and technological development of film as a whole, giving you a practical sense of awareness in the great filmic scheme of things. If you want to explore the world of cinema, this is as good an atlas as you can have.
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