Is human vision universal and largely unchanging, or historically conditioned? What happened to the Western understanding of vision when the camera obscuraAa simple pinhole camera popular in the 17th and 18th centuriesAgave way to the Kodak? Columbia University art historian Crary brings a multidisciplinary approach to such questions, and though his work is densely written for an academic audience, it can be fun to read if only for the illustrations of such wacky 19th-century optical toys and devices as the phenakistiscope and the Kaiserpanorama. The book's focus is the cultural function and meaning of an ideal of "attentiveness," which reveals that the contemporary prognosis of "attention deficit disorder" has roots in much earlier anxieties about the failure of concentrated perception. Examining a vast range of scientific writings, works of art and objects from the world of early mass entertainment, Crary argues that 19th-century European culture became obsessed with a perceived breakdown in attentionAas focus and concentration seemed to give way to trance, reverie, monomania and hypnosis. At well over twice the length of Crary's earlier book (1990's elegant Techniques of the Observer), this volume is comparatively unfocused and loosely organized. Extended analysis of three central oil paintings by Manet, Seurat and C?zanne promisesAbut never quite managesAto unify all the heterogeneous material into a coherent whole.

《从卡里加利到希特勒》，全名为《从卡里加利到希特勒——德国电影心理史》，1947年成书于美国，作者为德国著名电影理论家齐格弗里德·克拉考尔。
这部具有里程碑意义的著作是一份魏玛共和国时期电影史研究的成果。克拉考尔在1941年4月25日到达美国后便着手这项准备多年的计划，他当时的身份是纽约现代艺术博物馆电影资料馆馆长艾里斯·巴里的“特别助理”，此项研究先后得到洛克菲勒基金会和古根海姆基金会的资助。
在这部作品中，克拉考尔通过分析二十年代和三十年代初的德国影片，检视了从1918年至1933年的德国历史，借以展现“一战”后德国人的心理图景。在二十年代的德国影片中，他追踪到一些反复出现的视觉和叙事母题，他认为这些母题暴露了德国人对混乱的恐惧和对秩序的渴望，以致他们甘愿臣服于威权统治。克拉考尔在书中开辟了探查电影美学、一个民族（魏玛时期德国人）的普遍心理状况以及同时期社会、政治现实之间关联的新领域，并提出一项惊人的（时至今日仍有争议的）主张：作为通俗艺术的电影为人们洞察一个民族的无意识动机和幻想提供了可能。