Ben-Hur
The Original Blockbuster
by Jon Solomon
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Book Presentation:
The complete history of the Ben-Hur phenomenon
Ben-Hur was the first literary blockbuster to generate multiple and hugely profitable adaptations, highlighted by the 1959 film that won a record-setting 11 Oscars. More than a century before The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, and decades before Gone with the Wind and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, General Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur was spun off into dozens of popular publications and media productions, becoming a veritable commercial brand name that earned tens of millions of dollars.
Ben-Hur: The Original Blockbuster surveys the phenomenon’s unprecedented range and extraordinary endurance: various editions, spin-off publications, stage productions, movies, comic books, radio plays, and retail products were successfully marketed and sold from the 1880s and throughout the twentieth century. Today Ben-Hur Live is touring Europe and Asia, with a third film released in 2016.
Jon Solomon’s book offers an exciting and detailed study of the Ben-Hur brand, tracking its spectacular journey from Wallace’s original novel through to twenty-first century adaptations, and encompassing a wealth of previously unexplored material along the way.
About the Author:
Jon Solomon is Robert D. Novak Professor of Western Civilization and Culture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Giovanni Boccaccio: The Genealogy of the Pagan Gods (Harvard University Press, 2011), The Ancient World in the Cinema: Revised and Expanded Edition (Yale University Press, 2001), Ptolemy's Harmonics: Translation and Commentary (Brill, 1999), The Ancient World in the Cinema (A. S. Barnes & Co, 1978), Ancient Roman Feasts and Recipes (E. A. Seemann, 1977), The Complete Three Stooges (C3 Entertainment, 2001). He is editor of Accessing Antiquity: The Computerization of Classics Studies (University of Arizona Press, 1993), Apollo: Origins and Influences (University of Arizona Press, 1994) and Ancient Worlds in Film and Television: Gender and Politics (Brill, 2013).
Press Reviews:
He has collected an unimaginable amount of material and has thus created a Ben-Hur lexicon that, for a long time, will serve as a reference book for all future stories about the famous Roman and his later works.(translated from German)– Kresimir Matijevic, Europa-Universitat Flensburg, Thersites
Jon Solomon here sets a new standard for scholarship on the reception of antiquity in the media age. His book is an epic in its own right: a thorough treatment of an astonishing literary phenomenon that still pervades our popular arts and commercial culture, even legal history.– Martin Winkler, George Mason University
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
See Ben-Hur (1959) on IMDB ...
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