Here are 100 books that The Scapegoat fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have often been asked why I became an expert on vampires. The answer always goes back to my childhood, when I went to horror and sci-fi movies and watched old vampire movies on TV. In 1976, I published my first book of poetry, The Dracula Poems. My vampire interest eventually combined with my background in Russian literature when I discovered Perkowski’s Vampires of the Slavs. I obtained my Ph.D. in Slavic Folklore from UVA and have kept up my interest in this fascinating subject ever since. I am planning another book on the period known as Magia Posthuma when there were “epidemics” of vampirism around Austro-Hungary.
Carlo Ginzburg has written a great deal about witches and is an expert in ‘microhistory’–the archaeology of the marginalized and forgotten elements of human history.
This book is a culmination of his more academic research, in which he discusses not just witches but (importantly for me) the putative undercurrent of Central European shamanism in the witchcraft trials in Northern Italy. What does that have to do with vampires? I have long held a hypothesis that Friuli, where the benandanti (reputed to leave their bodies at night to fight witches), is a region where Slavic vampire folklore may have come into contact with Western European witchcraft beliefs.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I have often been asked why I became an expert on vampires. The answer always goes back to my childhood, when I went to horror and sci-fi movies and watched old vampire movies on TV. In 1976, I published my first book of poetry, The Dracula Poems. My vampire interest eventually combined with my background in Russian literature when I discovered Perkowski’s Vampires of the Slavs. I obtained my Ph.D. in Slavic Folklore from UVA and have kept up my interest in this fascinating subject ever since. I am planning another book on the period known as Magia Posthuma when there were “epidemics” of vampirism around Austro-Hungary.
Elizabeth Miller is one of the foremost scholars on Dracula and the literary (and cinematic) vampire. Although my research has focused on folklore about vampires and similar beings, you can’t really discuss the significance of vampires without discussing Dracula.
Elizabeth’s book tells you about Bram Stoker’s sources, his writing process, the geography of Dracula, and Vlad the Impaler, among other things, separating out facts from wrong ideas that have gotten passed around in popular culture. This book was invaluable for the chapter in my book discussing the novel Dracula.
To see our full range of Dracula studies, go to "Kindle Store" and search for DESERT ISLAND DRACULA LIBRARY.
Was Vlad the Impaler the inspiration for Bram Stoker's novel Dracula? No!
Did Stoker write about Transylvania from first-hand experience? No!
Has the model for Count Dracula's castle been found? No!
Must Count Dracula stay out of the sunlight? Absolutely not!
Literary sleuth Elizabeth Miller exposes these and numerous other popular distortions and fabrications that have plagued our understanding of Stoker and his famous novel.
Where is this nonsense coming from? This book will tell you.
I have often been asked why I became an expert on vampires. The answer always goes back to my childhood, when I went to horror and sci-fi movies and watched old vampire movies on TV. In 1976, I published my first book of poetry, The Dracula Poems. My vampire interest eventually combined with my background in Russian literature when I discovered Perkowski’s Vampires of the Slavs. I obtained my Ph.D. in Slavic Folklore from UVA and have kept up my interest in this fascinating subject ever since. I am planning another book on the period known as Magia Posthuma when there were “epidemics” of vampirism around Austro-Hungary.
I will argue that the rapid increase in attention to the folkloric basis of the vampire legends in English-language literature is the result of the work of the late Prof. Jan Perkowski, whose book The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism changed my life. I left a fairly lucrative high-tech career to get my doctorate in Slavic Folklore at the University of Virginia, where (full disclosure) I became Perkowski’s teaching assistant.
In 2006, I was asked to write the Preface for a collection of all of Perkowski’s seminal writings on the Slavic vampire. Vampire Lore is a compendium of his complete books, as well as harder-to-obtain articles about more arcane aspects of vampire folklore, in one solid volume.
My copy is well-worn, as this volume contains not only The Darkling but two other complete volumes, including Vampires of the Slavs and Vampires, Dwarves, and Witches among the Ontario Kashubs.…
Perkowski (Slavic languages and literatures, U. of Virginia) found that Slavic folk belief in vampires came to the New World with Kashubian emigrés to Ontario, Canada. The anthology contains this bicultural Slav's collected oral histories and writings on this Slavic mythology since the 1970s, e.g., The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism (1989), and translations of others' works on this tradition. The book concludes with charted analyses of Bram Stoker's Dracula and the linguistic conflation of assorted demons. Illustrations include an East European map of traditional religions, and b&w photographs of churches and cemeteries. Some references are not translated into…
Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season, drought-stricken, and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967, and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcibly sending its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.
Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he…
I have often been asked why I became an expert on vampires. The answer always goes back to my childhood, when I went to horror and sci-fi movies and watched old vampire movies on TV. In 1976, I published my first book of poetry, The Dracula Poems. My vampire interest eventually combined with my background in Russian literature when I discovered Perkowski’s Vampires of the Slavs. I obtained my Ph.D. in Slavic Folklore from UVA and have kept up my interest in this fascinating subject ever since. I am planning another book on the period known as Magia Posthuma when there were “epidemics” of vampirism around Austro-Hungary.
Serious students of vampire folklore are aware that the motif is found all over Eastern and Central Europe. Gabor Klaniczay is a Hungarian historian whose research focuses on witches and other supernatural entities in the cultures of Austro-Hungary and its environs.
This book showed me so many things that I and other American readers get wrong. For example, most people believe that the “blood countess,” Erzebeta Bathory, drank the blood of local virgins, but Klaniczay shows that these reports were actually constructed to get her out of the way of an inheritance scheme. Klaniczay is also an expert on Central European shamanism, and this led to my assertion that vampire lore incorporates some shamanistic beliefs.
This book of essays is concerned with aspects of religion, magic, and witchcraft in medieval and early-modern Europe, with particular reference to Central Europe. Drawing on a range of theoretical and methodological work including that of Elias, Geertz, Bakhtin, and Turner, the author gives special attention to the history of the body and of gesture, of symbolism and representation, and shows how these dimensions can be related to religious and mystical beliefs and practices.
Among the topics discussed are conflicts in twelfth-century Christianity and the tensions between popular religion and learned urban Christianity; heretical and nonconformist behavior in the twelfth…
A close college friend lost a child and dear friends to the group's suicide death at the hands of the Rev. Jim Jones at Jonestown, Guyana. As a physician, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst, I made the decision to use my knowledge, training, and skill in individual, group, and family therapy to explore and try to help others and myself understand and stand up to destructive, controlling gurus of all kinds…from destructive, exploitive religious cults to violent terror group cults like that of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. It has been a moving and emotional journey.
I am impressed with Stern’s courage and interview skills. She goes to where radical Islamist killers are born and raised—such as Pakistan. Madrassa schools recruit whole families in their promotion of violent jihad as a way of life and commitment. Youths will dedicate their lives, even die, for what they perceive as worthy causes.
Stern exposes the powerful tools by which ordinary people come to kill in God’s name with a sense of quiet conviction.
For four years, Jessica Stern interviewed extremist members of three religions around the world: Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Traveling extensively-to refugee camps in Lebanon, to religious schools in Pakistan, to prisons in Amman, Asqelon, and Pensacola-she discovered that the Islamic jihadi in the mountains of Pakistan and the Christian fundamentalist bomber in Oklahoma have much in common. Based on her vast research, Stern lucidly explains how terrorist organizations are formed by opportunistic leaders who-using religion as both motivation and justification-recruit the disenfranchised. She depicts how moral fervor is transformed into sophisticated organizations that strive for money, power, and attention. Jessica…
I never wanted to study mass murder or violence of any kind. I was doing my internship for my Ph.D. in counseling psychology at a psychiatric hospital for children and adolescents when the attack at Columbine High School occurred. Within ten days of that attack, a 16-year-old boy was admitted to the hospital because he was viewed as a Columbine-type risk. I was assigned to conduct a psychological evaluation of him. Then another potential school shooter was admitted. And another. Seeking insight into this population and learning how to recognize the warning signs and prevent impending attacks has become my life’s work.
This book is an excellent guide to threat assessment and violence prevention in higher education.
It includes material on threats posed by students as well as employees. What I particularly appreciate about this work is that it includes numerous case examples of therapeutic work with people who presented a risk of violence.
This clinical focus is rare in works on this topic and makes this book especially important.
"Harm to Others offers students and clinicians an effective way to increase their knowledge of and training in violence risk and threat assessment, while providing a comprehensive examination of current treatment approaches. In an easy-to-understand, jargon-free manner, Dr. Van Brunt shares his observations, extensive clinical expertise, and the latest research on what clinicians should be aware of when performing risk and threat assessments.
Features Numerous examples from recent mass shootings and rampage violence to help explain the motivations and risk factors of those who make threats Two unique, detailed case transcripts to demonstrate how to conduct a threat assessment Treatment…
Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…
As a journalist I have seen and experienced amazing things. As a memoirist my job is to make you shiver as I take you down a crumbling Ukrainian coal mine, laugh in frustration as I argue with a customs agent charging me $100 for a few bootleg CDs and smile with happiness when I finally locate my Ukrainian date after a classic miscommunication. I’m recommending memoirs that will take you on adventures, tackle serious topics, but leave you with hope, and oftentimes a smile of understanding. Even if you haven’t covered a war, faced death, or disappeared, these writers speak to the universal hopes, fears, and disappointments of human life.
When I was 10 I disappeared from my life for a while. I left school, home, and my family to live in a hospital for several months. This break in my own childhood narrative is what got me into the Busby story. Cylin Busby was nine years old when her dad, John, a police officer, was shot. Her father survives, but the family is forced to disappear for their own protection.
While the book is written by a father and daughter, it is Cylin’s young nine-year-old voice that pulled me in, reminding me what it is like to be a child and powerless as the world around you falls apart. That sounds dark, but children have a way of finding hope. This story has a happy(ish) ending.
When Cylin Busby was nine years old, she was obsessed with Izod clothing, the Muppets, and a box turtle she kept in a shoebox. Then everything changed overnight. Her police officer father, John, was driving to his shift when someone leveled a shotgun at his window. The blasts that followed left John's jaw on the passenger seat of his car-literally. While clinging to life, he managed to write down the name of the only person he thought could have pulled the trigger. The suspect? A local ex-con with rumored mob connections. The motive? Officer Busby was scheduled to testify against…
I developed a strong interest in current events, especially politics, in high school. What the government does, or does not do, struck me as a vital piece of the puzzle in trying to explain why things are the way they are. That soon led, however, to seeing how the past continues to influence the present. No decade is more important than the 1960s for understanding our current political climate.
On May 8, 1970, just days after the killing of four college students at Kent State University, construction workers in New York City violently attacked a group that had gathered to protest the Vietnam War.
Kuhn offers a riveting account of the events (dubbed the “Hardhat Riot” by some and “Workers’ Woodstock” by others), but he also situates them into a broader story of how the war and other developments of the 1960s exacerbated divisions within the Democratic Party between white, heavily unionized blue-collar workers in the urban North and an emerging class of college-educated professionals.
Nixon successfully courted many of the blue-collar workers on the way to his landslide victory in 1972. Kuhn is no apologist for the workers, but he also avoids facile stereotypes about the white working class, some of which persist to this day.
In May 1970, four days after Kent State, construction workers chased students through downtown Manhattan, beating scores of protestors bloody. As hardhats clashed with hippies, it soon became clear that something larger was happening; Democrats were at war with themselves. In The Hardhat Riot, David Paul Kuhn tells the fateful story-how chaotic it was, when it began, when the white working class first turned against liberalism, when Richard Nixon seized the breach, and America was forever changed. It was unthinkable one generation before: FDR's "forgotten man" siding with the party of Big Business and, ultimately, paving the way for presidencies…
I'm a professor of modern U.S. history and have spent my career researching this list's fascinating era. This moment began our modern political history. The first Red Scare in the United States, erupting in the wake of World War I and the Russian Revolution, was a conflict over the definition and limits of radicalism in a modern democracy and the limits of its repression. It was also tied to other seismic questions of the era that remain relevant, including how far the fights of women and Blacks for opportunities and rights that other Americans took for granted could succeed, whether to end mass immigration, the meaning of ‘Americanism,’ the extent of civil liberties, the limits of capitalism, and the role of social movements in the republic.
We must remember that 1919 also saw unprecedented widespread bloodshed in attacks on Black communities. This wave of violence is remembered as the Red Summer not because it coincided with the Red Scare, but because the worst of it occurred in and around that summer. Krugler gives us the national saga but helpfully zooms in to some of the major clashes to help us understand why and how they occurred – and most of all – how Blacks fought back through self-defense, the Black press, and the courts.
1919, The Year of Racial Violence recounts African Americans' brave stand against a cascade of mob attacks in the United States after World War I. The emerging New Negro identity, which prized unflinching resistance to second-class citizenship, further inspired veterans and their fellow black citizens. In city after city - Washington, DC; Chicago; Charleston; and elsewhere - black men and women took up arms to repel mobs that used lynching, assaults, and other forms of violence to protect white supremacy; yet, authorities blamed blacks for the violence, leading to mass arrests and misleading news coverage. Refusing to yield, African Americans…
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
by
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
I love books that keep me up at night. I'm constantly trying to get into a good, healthy bedtime routine—but I am also constantly sabotaging that effort by finding books that I simply can’t put down. The feeling of being drawn so deep into a story that the hours slip away is easily one of my favorite feelings in the world. I also love books that make me wake up in the middle of the night, books that slide into my brain and plant new ideas there. As an author, I am always striving to write those books. I can think of no higher compliment than “I stayed up all night reading it.”
This book delivers truly striking insight into the nature of fear, the cost of survival, and cycles of violence. Dawson’s writing shines here, grounded and visceral, and deeply honest. Between the propulsive and tense plot, the exquisitely rendered characters, and the unflinching examination of the world we live in, this one kept me up late and woke me up early.
How far would you go to be free? Three generations of women forge a new path through an America torn by a mysterious wave of violence in this “chilling [and] dizzyingly effective” (The New York Times Book Review) novel of revenge, liberation, and triumph.
“A compulsively readable fusion of domestic thriller and modern horror.”—Kameron Hurley, author of The Light Brigade
“A novel that defines this era.”—Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians
They call it The Violence: a strange epidemic that causes the infected to experience sudden bursts of animalistic rage, with no provocation…
