A mixed bag studded with insights and flaws. Poole, who tends to conflate his personal tastes with high art, fires...
Poole (History/Coll. of Charleston; In the Mountains of Madness: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of H.P. Lovecraft, 2016, etc.) brings a scholar's eye and a devotee's heart to a study of the literary, film, and artistic incarnations of horror from the World War I period to today.
This is really two books, one an excellent examination of the nightmare repercussions of the Great War and a second that is only partially successful in tying it to the origins of horror as entertainment—and catharsis. Tales of the macabre existed long before the war, but the author argues that the war remains the true wellspring of the modern genre. His evidence makes a persuasive case, up to a point. The book is obviously the result of significant research, but Poole spends too much time playing amateur psychologist in an effort to support his premise, frequently interpreting the facts to fit his conjectures. The author’s command of literary and film studies is evident, and he takes care to examine a wide range of noted works and their creators rather than just the standard-bearers. But he also undercuts his arguments through overstatement—e.g., claiming that the recent rash of zombie films and TV is “a national obsession.” An astute exploration of the cultural significance of a film like Nosferatu is one thing, but some readers may have a hard time taking seriously the claim that an orgy of ooze like the dreadful 1982 remake of The Thing is a “classic.” This is not a matter of being dismissive of genre works, which can be superb, or of the author, who is clearly a sharp, talented historian.
A mixed bag studded with insights and flaws. Poole, who tends to conflate his personal tastes with high art, fires pre-emptive strikes against critics dismissive of the horror genre, but he fails to accept the legitimate reasons why these judgments hold sway.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64009-093-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
