The Vampire Book
The Encyclopedia of the Undead
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
The Ultimate Collection of Vampire Facts and Fiction
From Vlad the Impaler to Barnabas Collins to Edward Cullen to Dracula and Bill Compton, renowned religion expert and fearless vampire authority J. Gordon Melton, PhD takes the reader on a vast, alphabetic tour of the psychosexual, macabre world of the blood-sucking undead. Digging deep into the lore, myths, pop culture, and reported realities of vampires and vampire legends from across the globe, The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead exposes everything about the blood thirsty predator.
Death and immortality, sexual prowess and surrender, intimacy and alienation, rebellion and temptation. The allure of the vampire is eternal, and The Vampire Book explores it all. The historical, literary, mythological, biographical, and popular aspects of one of the world's most mesmerizing paranormal subject. This vast reference is an alphabetical tour of the psychosexual, macabre world of the soul-sucking undead.
In the first fully revised and updated edition in a decade, Dr. J. Gordon Melton (president of the American chapter of the Transylvania Society of Dracula) bites even deeper into vampire lore, myths, reported realities, and legends that come from all around the world. From Transylvania to plague-infested Europe to Nostradamus and from modern literature to movies and TV series, this exhaustive guide furnishes more than 500 essays to quench your thirst for facts, biographies, definitions, and more.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The third edition of this comprehensive encyclopedia of vampires and vampire lore is exhaustive, covering vampire esoterica, vampire novelists, historical figures like Vlad the Impaler, and much more, and featuring an extra decade of vampire knowledge that allows Melton to incorporate the Twilight phenomenon and acknowledge the cultural importance of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other developments in the bloody field. Melton's (The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomenon) research is meticulous and readers with even a passing interest in vampires will be amazed by the staggering wealth of information presented. However, Melton's volume is redundant in the extreme and some of what he includes (such as entries like the London of Dracula's Time) are only tenuously related to vampires. At times, it's difficult to tell if Melton has an extremely dry sense of humor or none at all, since his entries are so obsessively single-minded. Ultimately, readers who really want something to sink their teeth into will find this indispensible, but more casual enthusiasts will likely be overwhelmed.
