As many longtime readers of this blog know, I have spent the past four years quietly but steadily working with my good buddy Adam Selzer on a non-fiction book about the history of early film production in Chicago. I am pleased to announce that today we signed a contract with Wallflower Press, the esteemed London-based film studies imprint of Columbia University Press. Titled Flickering Empire: How Chicago Invented the U.S. Film Industry, this book tells the fascinating but too little known story of how Chicago served as the unlikely capital of film production in America in the decade prior to the rise of Hollywood.

We strove to write an account that we hope is as entertaining as it is informative, and one that will straddle the worlds of academia and popular non-fiction alike. Colorful, larger than life historical figures like Thomas Edison, Charlie Chaplin, Oscar Micheaux and Orson Welles are major players in this story — in addition to important but forgotten industry giants like “Colonel” William Selig, George Spoor and Gilbert “Broncho Billy” Anderson. Publication is scheduled for March 2015. More info concerning Flickering Empire will appear on this blog in the near future — so stay tuned!

You can visit Wallflower Press on the web and browse their wonderful catalog of titles here.

You can read pertinent posts on “Chicago movies” on this blog here.