Zombie Holocaust: How the Living Dead Devoured Pop Culture

Zombie Holocaust is a lively history of one of the most enduring fictional archetypes: the shambling, stalking, lethal living dead. From mentally enslaved cane field workers in Haiti, first described in early-20th-century travelogues, to the mindless hordes of soulless killers that regularly destroy our civilization onscreen and on the printed page, the zombie has undergone an eye-popping transformation. With wry humor and unflinching attention to detail, this colorful book celebrates these creatures in all their fetid glory. Author David Flint excavates early accounts of how voodoo was believed to reanimate the dead, unearths horror movie incarnations from Bela Lugosi’s White Zombie to George Romero’s cult classics to recent Eurotrash zombies, showcases graphic novel and comic book versions like EC’s putrefying nasties and Marvel’s Tales of the Zombie, and much more. The book is both a fun pop culture survey and a deeper study of what underlies the undiminished popularity of these terrifying, tragic figures in an anxious, post-9/11 world.