History, as Henry Ford said, may be bunk, but as author Joseph Roquemore"s book about 350 historical movies reveals, it"s good box office. An independent scholar from Chicago, Roquemore measures his chosen fictions against the facts of 150 episodes in world history. Beginning with movie subjects drawn from the past 3,000 years, he spins sprightly, dense, witty essays on, for example, Jesus" life (Jesus of Nazareth), Spartacus"s revolt (Spartacus), the Salem witch trials (The Crucible), JFK (JFK), and, well, Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves). The essays are at their best when he pauses to consider the flotsam: a piece on King David estimates Goliath"s height (an inch or two taller than Michael Jordan); one on Jesus slows enough to reflect that his "public career was eerie, strange, dreamlike." And he lists the sights Wyatt Earp would have first seen coming into Tombstone--25 saloons, 14 casinos, and "a restless sprawl of tents and cabins." He grades historical feel as high as historical facticity. So Pat O"Connor"s grim Irish gestalt movie, Cal, is called "one of the best period films ever made"; other kudos go to Steven Soderbergh"s King of the Hill, the Sally Field tear-jerker Places in the Heart, and Das Boot, for its "stinking look." Still, where there"s history there"s subjectivity; Roquemore browbeats the philosophically disquieting The Thin Red Line for being "pretentious," and dresses down Oliver Stone for littering JFK with so much error that it "makes Cinderella look like a BBC documentary." Exceptions aside, anyone interested in the historical or the hysterical will get a kick out of this fascinating book. --Lyall Bush