In the decades since, its critical status as the greatest film ever made has grown, with numerous essays and books on it including Peter Cowie's "The Cinema of Orson Welles", Ronald Gottesman's "Focus on Citizen Kane", a collection of significant reviews and background pieces, and most notably Kael's essay, "Raising Kane", which promoted the value of the film to a much wider audience than it had reached before. Despite its criticism of Welles, it further popularized the notion of "Citizen Kane" as the great American film. The rise of art house and film society circuits also aided in the film's rediscovery. David Thomson said that the film 'grows with every year as America comes to resemble it."