Curious about all things melancholy and mysterious? As the nights grow longer and chillier, there’s no better time to curl up with a hauntingly good book. From Gothic style and graveyards to Zombies and Calculus, we鈥檙e summoning the perfect reads for autumn鈥檚 darkest hours.
A lively story of death, What to Expect When You鈥檙e Dead explores the fascinating death-related beliefs and practices of a wide range of ancient cultures and traditions鈥擬esopotamian, Egyptian, Hindu, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman, Early Christian, and Islamic. By drawing on the latest scholarship on ancient archaeology, art, literature, and funerary inscriptions, Robert Garland invites readers to put themselves in the sandals of ancient peoples and to imagine their mental state moment by moment as they sought鈥攊n ways that turn out to be remarkably similar to ours鈥攖o assist the dead on their journey to the next world and to understand life鈥檚 greatest mystery.
Killing the Dead provides the first in-depth, global account of one of the world鈥檚 most widespread yet misunderstood forms of mass hysteria鈥攖he vampire epidemic. In a spellbinding narrative, John Blair takes readers from ancient Mesopotamia to present-day Haiti to explore a macabre frontier of life and death where corpses are believed to wander or do harm from the grave, and where the vampire is a physical expression of society鈥檚 inexplicable terrors and anxieties.
From the author of Gothic, a marvelously illustrated cultural history of graves and graveyards, from the earliest known burial sites to today鈥檚 green burials. Blending lively storytelling with a wealth of stunning illustrations, Graveyards is a lyrical, frequently unexpected account of the grave as a signpost to the afterlife, a site of remembrance and self-reflection, and an object of enduring fascination.
The Greek philosopher Diogenes said that when he died his body should be tossed over the city walls for beasts to scavenge. Why should he or anyone else care what became of his corpse? In The Work of the Dead, acclaimed cultural historian Thomas Laqueur examines why humanity has universally rejected Diogenes鈥檚 argument. No culture has been indifferent to mortal remains. Even in our supposedly disenchanted scientific age, the dead body still matters鈥攆or individuals, communities, and nations. A remarkably ambitious history, The Work of the Dead offers a compelling and richly detailed account of how and why the living have cared for the dead, from antiquity to the twentieth century.
Death in the United States is undergoing a quiet revolution. You can have your body frozen, dissected, composted, dissolved, or tanned. Your family can incorporate your remains into jewelry, shotgun shells, paperweights, and artwork. Cremations have more than doubled, and DIY home funerals and green burials are on the rise. American Afterlives is Shannon Lee Dawdy鈥檚 lyrical and compassionate account of changing death practices in America as people face their own mortality and search for a different kind of afterlife.
Death and the Idea of Mexico is the first social, cultural, and political history of death in a nation that has made death its tutelary sign. Examining the history of death and of the death sign from the sixteenth-century holocaust to contemporary Mexican American identity politics, anthropologist Claudio Lomnitz鈥檚 innovative study marks a turning point in understanding Mexico鈥檚 rich and unique use of death imagery. Unlike contemporary Europeans and Americans, whose denial of death permeates their cultures, the Mexican people display and cultivate a jovial familiarity with death. This intimacy with death has become the cornerstone of Mexico鈥檚 national identity.
鈥淚t takes an entire lifetime to learn how to die,鈥� wrote the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC鈥�65 AD). He counseled readers to 鈥渟tudy death always,鈥� and took his own advice, returning to the subject again and again in all his writings, yet he never treated it in a complete work. How to Die gathers in one volume, for the first time, Seneca鈥檚 remarkable meditations on death and dying. Edited and translated by James S. Romm, How to Die reveals a provocative thinker and dazzling writer who speaks with a startling frankness about the need to accept death or even, under certain conditions, to seek it out.
The word Gothic conjures associations with the dark and melancholy, the weird and feared, and haunted places and people. In Gothic, Roger Luckhurst offers readers an unprecedented look at the ways this uncanny style has manifested itself through architecture, literature, film, art, video games, and more. From the works of Victor Hugo and E. T. A. Hoffmann to Southern Gothic, ancient folklore, and classic horror movies, Luckhurst explores how an aesthetic that began in the margins has been reinvented through the centuries to become part of mainstream global culture.
From its first publication in 1992, Men, Women, and Chain Saws has offered a groundbreaking perspective on the creativity and influence of horror cinema since the mid-1970s. Investigating the popularity of the low-budget tradition, Carol Clover looks in particular at slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films. Although such movies have been traditionally understood as offering only sadistic pleasures to their mostly male audiences, Clover demonstrates that they align spectators not with the male tormentor, but with the females tormented鈥攏otably the slasher movie鈥檚 鈥渇inal girls鈥濃�攁s they endure fear and degradation before rising to save themselves. Including a new preface by the author, this 快色直播 Classics edition is a definitive work that has found an avid readership from students of film theory to major Hollywood filmmakers.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809鈥�1849) changed residences about once a year throughout his life. Driven by a desire for literary success and the pressures of supporting his family, Poe sought work in American magazines, living in the cities that produced them. Scott Peeples chronicles Poe鈥檚 rootless life in the cities, neighborhoods, and rooms where he lived and worked, exploring how each new place left its enduring mark on the writer and his craft.
What would happen to international politics if the dead rose from the grave and started to eat the living? Daniel Drezner鈥檚 groundbreaking book answers the question that other international relations scholars have been too scared to ask. Addressing timely issues with analytical bite, Drezner looks at how well-known theories from international relations might be applied to a war with zombies. With worldwide calamity feeling ever closer, this new apocalyptic edition includes updates throughout as well as a new chapter on postcolonial perspectives.
Even if you鈥檝e never seen a zombie movie or television show, you could identify an undead ghoul if you saw one. With their endless wandering, lumbering gait, insatiable hunger, antisocial behavior, and apparently memory-less existence, zombies are the walking nightmares of our deepest fears. What do these characteristic behaviors reveal about the inner workings of the zombie mind? Could we diagnose zombism as a neurological condition by studying their behavior? In Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?, neuroscientists and zombie enthusiasts Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek apply their neuro-know-how to dissect the puzzle of what has happened to the zombie brain to make the undead act differently than their human prey.
How can calculus help you survive the zombie apocalypse? Colin Adams, humor columnist for the Mathematical Intelligencer and one of today鈥檚 most outlandish and entertaining popular math writers, demonstrates how in this zombie adventure novel. Featuring easy-to-use appendixes that explain the book鈥檚 mathematics in greater detail, Zombies and Calculus is suitable both for those who have only recently gotten the calculus bug, as well as for those whose disease has advanced to the multivariable stage.
Zombie Economics takes the reader through the origins, consequences, and implosion of a system of ideas whose time has come and gone. These beliefs鈥攖hat deregulation had conquered the financial cycle, that markets were always the best judge of value, that policies designed to benefit the rich made everyone better off鈥攂rought us to the brink of disaster once before, and their persistent hold on many threatens to do so again. Because these ideas will never die unless there is an alternative, Zombie Economics also looks ahead at what could replace market liberalism, arguing that a simple return to traditional Keynesian economics and the politics of the welfare state will not be enough鈥攅ither to kill dead ideas, or prevent future crises. In a new chapter, Quiggin brings the book up to date with a discussion of the re-emergence of pre-Keynesian ideas about austerity and balanced budgets as a response to recession.
Lafcadio Hearn (1850鈥�1904) was one of the nineteenth century鈥檚 best-known writers, his name celebrated alongside those of Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson. Born in Greece and raised in Ireland, Hearn was a true prodigy and world traveler. He worked as a reporter in Cincinnati, New Orleans, and the West Indies before heading to Japan in 1890 on a commission from 贬补谤辫别谤鈥檚. There, he married a Japanese woman from a samurai family, changed his name to Koizumi Yakumo, and became a Japanese subject. An avid collector of traditional Japanese tales, legends, and myths, Hearn taught literature and wrote his own tales for both Japanese and Western audiences. Japanese Tales of Lafcadio Hearn brings together twenty-eight of Hearn鈥檚 strangest and most entertaining stories in one elegant volume.
The findings of forensic science鈥攆rom DNA profiles and chemical identifications of illegal drugs to comparisons of bullets, fingerprints, and shoeprints鈥攁re widely used in police investigations and courtroom proceedings. While we recognize the significance of this evidence for criminal justice, the actual work of forensic scientists is rarely examined and largely misunderstood. Blood, Powder, and Residue goes inside a metropolitan crime laboratory to shed light on the complex social forces that underlie the analysis of forensic evidence.