Remaking History considers the ways that historical fictions of all kinds enable a complex engagement with the past. Popular historical texts including films, television and novels, along with cultural phenomena such as superheroes and vampires, broker relationships to ‘history’, while also enabling audiences to understand the ways in which the past is written, structured and ordered. Jerome de Groot uses examples from contemporary popular culture to show the relationship between fiction and history in two key ways. Firstly, the texts pedagogically contribute to the historical imaginary and secondly they allow reflection upon how the past is constructed as ‘history’. In doing so, they provide an accessible and engaging means to critique, conceptualize and reject the processes of historical representation. The book looks at the use of the past in fiction from sources including Mad Men, Downton Abbey and Howard Brenton’s Anne Boleyn, along with the work of directors such as Terence Malick, Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese, to show that fictional representations enable a comprehension of the fundamental strangeness of the past and the ways in which this foreign, exotic other is constructed. Drawing from popular films, novels and TV series of recent years, and engaging with key thinkers from Marx to Derrida, Remaking History is a must for all students interested in the meaning that history has for fiction, and vice versa.

Uses diagrams, photographs, and text to provide step-by-step instructions for making thirteen ballistic devices, including a match-powered rocket, a potato cannon, and a Cincinnati fire kite.

A history of projectile-shooting machines with informative sidebars, trivia, and tips on tools provides step-by-step instructions on how to build twenty different machines, ranging from the spud gun to jam jar jet and marshmallow shooter.

A journey into world of underground technology enthusiasts introduces the amateur inventors, science fanatics, and technophiles dedicated to creating a variety of unusual machines, with little regard for profit or their own physical well-being.

Provides instructions on building seven catapults, including God's Stone Thrower and the Wild Donkey, using common materials.

Learn how to use scrap wood and rope, hammer and nails to build seven historic catapults. Apprentice Dennis the Menaces will be able to defend their castles with weapons based on ancient artillery devices, rom the Greek ballista to the English trebuchet.

Offers instructions on how to build a fighting robot, with details about destructive weaponry, radio control systems, and battle requirements and strategies.