In American Recordings, Francesco Jodice recounts the twentieth century as the American century that shaped the collective imagination of several generations: President Eisenhower's farewell address to the nation, the arms race, nuclear testing, the widespread dissemination of information as chronicled in Sidney Lumet's Network, the birth of the horror genre with Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Brian Yuzna's Society, the readings of freethinker Gore Vidal in Nicholas Wrathall's The United States of Amnesia, the documentary film End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones, the spread and rise of television that daily disseminates the American historical imagination. Jodice transposes the film of the same name (2015) into a book, a symphony that explores American myths and heroes and reflects on the power of images in shaping cultural processes.