Searching for John Ford

John FordÂ's classic filmsÂ--such asStagecoach,The Grapes of Wrath,How Green Was My Valley,The Quiet Man, andThe SearchersÂ--have earned him worldwide admiration as AmericaÂ's foremost filmmaker, a director whose rich visual imagination conjures up indelible, deeply moving images of our collective past.Joseph McBrideÂ'sSearching for John Ford, described as definitive by both theNew York Timesand theIrish Times, surpasses all other biographies of the filmmaker in its depth, originality, and insight. Encompassing and illuminating FordÂ's myriad complexities and contradictions, McBride traces the trajectory of FordÂ's life from his beginnings as Â"BullÂ" Feeney, the nearsighted, football-playing son of Irish immigrants in Portland, Maine, to his recognition, after a long, controversial, and much-honored career, as AmericaÂ's national mythmaker. Blending lively and penetrating analyses of FordÂ's films with an impeccably documented narrative of the historical and psychological contexts in which those films were created, McBride has at long last given John Ford the biography his stature demands.

Joseph McBride is the author of the acclaimed biographies Steven Spielberg: A Biography and Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success, both also published by the University Press of Mississippi, and of many other books on film. McBride is an associate professor in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University.