Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Historian W. Scott Poole traces the confluence of history, technology, and art that gave us modern horror films and literature.
The roots of modern horror are found in the First World War. It was the most devastating event to occur in the early 1900s, with thirty-eight million dead and seventeen million wounded in the most grotesque of ways, owing to the new machines brought to war. If Downton Abbey showed the ripple effect of this catastrophe above stairs, Wasteland reveals how how bloody battlefields, screaming asylums, and desolated cities and villages made their ways into the darker corners of our psyche.
Historian W. Scott Poole chronicles the era's major figures-Freud, T. S. Eliot, H. P. Lovecraft, Wilfred Owen, Peter Lorre, David Cronenberg, and Freddy Krueger-as well as their influences. Wasteland is a surprising-but wholly convincing-perspective on horror that also speaks to the audience for history, film, and popular culture.
November 11th, 2018 is the one-hundredth anniversary of the signing of the armistice that brought World War I to a close, and a number of smart and well-received recent histories have helped us reevaluate this conflict. Now W. Scott Poole takes us behind the frontlines of battle to the dark places of the imagination where the legacy of the War to End All Wars lives on.
Synopsis
Historian and Bram Stoker Award nominee W. Scott Poole traces the confluence of history, technology, and art that gave us modern horror films and literature.
In the early twentieth century, World War I was the most devastating event humanity had yet experienced. New machines of war left tens of millions killed or wounded in the most grotesque of ways. The Great War remade the world's map, created new global powers, and brought forth some of the biggest problems still facing us today. But it also birthed a new art form: the horror film, made from the fears of a generation ruined by war.
From Nosferatu to Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man, from Fritz Lang, F. W. Murnau, and Albin Grau to Tod Browning and James Whale, the touchstones of horror can all trace their roots to the bloodshed of the First World War. Historian W. Scott Poole chronicles these major figures and the many movements they influenced. Wasteland reveals how bloody battlefields, the fear of the corpse, and a growing darkness made their way into the deepest corners of our psyche.
On the one-hundredth anniversary of the signing of the armistice that brought World War I to a close, W. Scott Poole takes us behind the front lines of battle to a no-man's-land where the legacy of the War to End All Wars lives on.