Minneapolis launch of Alice Lovejoy’s Tales of Militant Chemistry

Join Boneshaker Books on Sunday, September 14th at 3:00 pm for a conversation between Alice Lovejoy and Paul Shambroom about Alice’s new book, Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War (University of California Press, 2025)

About the book:

The history of film calls to mind unforgettable photographs, famous directors, and the glitz and hustle of the media business. But there is another tale to tell that connects film as a material to the twentieth century’s history of war, destruction, and cruelty.

This story comes into focus during World War II at the factories of Tennessee Eastman, where photographic giant Kodak produced the rudiments of movie magic. Not far away, at Oak Ridge, Kodak was also enriching uranium for the Manhattan Project—uranium destined for the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. While the world’s largest film manufacturer transformed into a formidable military contractor, across the ocean its competitor Agfa grew entangled with Nazi Germany’s machinery of war. After 1945, Kodak’s film factories stood at the front lines of a new, colder war, as their photosensitive products became harbingers of the dangers of nuclear fallout.

Following scientists, soldiers, prisoners, and spies through Kodak’s and Agfa’s global empires—from Ukraine to Germany, the Belgian Congo to the United States—Alice Lovejoy links the golden age of cinema and photography to colonialism, the military-industrial complex, radioactive dust, and toxic waste. Revelatory and chilling,Tales of Militant Chemistry shows how film became a weapon whose chemistry irrevocably shaped the world we live in today.

"Sprawling and full of unexpected turns, it’s a rewarding deep dive"—Publishers Weekly

"Alice Lovejoy’s writing makes you re-see the world film made—connecting the graphic violence of war to the stealthy violence of a chemical-laden world. A fascinating, gripping, globe-spanning guide to a history that now connects us all."—Bathsheba Demuth, author of Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait​

Alice Lovejoy is author of the award-winning Army Film and the Avant Garde: Cinema and Experiment in the Czechoslovak Military. A former editor at Film Comment, she is Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature and the Program in Moving Image, Media, and Sound at the University of Minnesota.

Paul Shambroom uses found and original photographs to explore American power and culture. He’s published four monographs: Purpletown (2024), Past Time (2020), Meetings (2004), and Face to Face with the Bomb…. (2003), and a mid-career catalog …Picturing Power (2008). He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota.

Limited copies of Tales of Militant Chemistry will be available for purchase at the event. Copies can also be ordered at https://bookshop.org/shop/Boneshaker.

This event is free, but registration is requested. Because seating is limited, please register only if you plan to attend.

Masks are required at Boneshaker Books (extras will be available on site).