Ferocious Reality is excellent. The book centers on how Herzog consistently undertakes an exploration of the limits of documentary cinema and engages with it as performative behavior, challenging its boundaries. Eric Ames analyzes a broad range of Herzog's films and engages with an array of important theoreticians of documentary cinema. This book is first-rate and innovative. -Brad Prager, author ... Read moreof The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth Werner Herzog has long avowed that he hates documentaries and does not participate in the tradition. Eric Ames's wonderful book lets us in on an open secret: `Herzog has. . . added to the vitality and visibility of documentary cinema internationally for more than four decades.' I would go further: the best of the films that Herzog has made over his long career have been those that, if not called documentaries, cannot be labeled fictions. Werner Herzog's challenges to the documentary tradition have inevitably become part of that tradition. This book shows us how. -Linda Williams, University of California, Berkeley Show Less