W. Scott Poole

"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 38 million dead and 17 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 it made its way into the darker corners of our psyche on the bloody battlefield, the screaming asylum, and desolated cities and villages. Historian W. Scott Poole chronicles the era's major figures and their influences--Freud, T.S. Eliot, H.P. Lovecraft, Wilfred Owen and Peter Lorre, David Cronenberg and Freddy Krueger--as well as cult favorites and the collective unconscious. 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 100th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that brought the First World War 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" --

The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror

Wasteland

Surveys America's long-standing obsession with monsters, looking at both historical and cultural perspectives.

Our Historical Obsessions with the Hideous and the Haunting

Monsters in America

The new book from award-winning historian W. Scott Poole is a whip-smart piece of pop culture detailing the story of cult horror figure Vampira that actually tells the much wider story of 1950s America and its treatment of women and sex, as well as capturing a fascinating swath of Los Angeles history. In Vampire, Poole gives us the eclectic life of the dancer, stripper, actress, and artist Maila Nurmi, who would reinvent herself as Vampira during the backdrop of 1950s America, an era of both chilling conformity and the nascent rumblings of the countercultural response that led from the Beats and free jazz to the stirring of the LGBT movement and the hardcore punk scene in the bohemian enclave along Melrose Avenue. A veteran of the New York stage and late nights at Hollywood's hipster hangouts, Nurmi would eventually be linked to Elvis, Orson Welles, and James Dean, as well as stylist and photographer Rudi Gernreich, founder of the Mattachine Society and designer of the thong. Thanks to rumors of a romance between Vampira and James Dean, his tragic death inspired the circulation of stories that she had cursed him and, better yet, had access to his dead body for use in her dark arts. In Poole's expert hands, Vampira is more than the story of a highly creative artist continually reinventing herself, but a parable of the runaway housewife bursting the bounds of our straight-laced conventions with an exuberant display of camp, sex, and creative individuality that owed something to the morbid New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams, the evil queen from Disney's Snow White, and the popular, underground bondage magazine Bizarre, and forward to the staged excesses of Madonna and Lady Gaga. Vampira is a wildly compelling tour through a forgotten piece of pop cultural history, one with both cultish and literary merit, sure to capture the imagination of Vampira fans new and old.

Dark Goddess of Horror

Vampira

The panoramic story of how the horror genre transformed into one of the most incisive critiques of unchecked American imperial power The American empire emerged from the shadows of World War II. As the nation’s influence swept the globe with near impunity, a host of evil forces followed—from racism, exploitation, and military invasion to killer clowns, flying saucers, and monsters borne of a fear of the other. By viewing American imperial history through the prism of the horror genre, Dark Carnivals lays bare how the genre shaped us, distracted us, and gave form to a violence as American as apple pie. A carnival ride that connects the mushroom clouds of 1945 to the beaches of Amity Island, Charles Manson to the massacre at My Lai, and John Wayne to John Wayne Gacy, the new book by acclaimed historian W. Scott Poole reveals how horror films and fictions have followed the course of America’s military and cultural empire and explores how the shadow of our national sins can take on the form of mass entertainment.

Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire

Dark Carnivals

This brilliant and page-turning book reveals the importance of H.P. Lovecraft in a way no one has before--a survey of his life but, more importantly, an examination of his influence that stretches throughout the entertainment industry and into society as a whole. Interweaving the biography of the legendary writer with an exploration of Lovecraft as a phenomenon, In the Mountains of Madness strives to explain this reclusive, cultish figure while challenging some of the general views held by Lovecraft devotees. Focusing specifically on the large cross-section of horror and science fiction fans who know Lovecraft through films, role-playing games, and video games directly influenced by his work, but who know little or nothing about the man himself, In the Mountains of Madness places Lovecraft and his work in a cultural context, as an artist more in tune with our time than his own. More than a traditional biography, this provocative book reclaims the true essence of Lovecraft in relation to the comics of Joe Lansdale, the novels of Stephen King, and some of the biggest blockbuster films in contemporary America, proving the undying influence of this rare and significant figure.

The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of H.P. Lovecraft

In the Mountains of Madness

Satan in America tells the story of America's complicated relationship with the devil. "New light" evangelists of the eighteenth century, enslaved African Americans, demagogic politicians, and modern American film-makers have used the devil to damn their enemies, explain the nature of evil and injustice, mount social crusades, construct a national identity, and express anxiety about matters as diverse as the threat of war to the dangers of deviant sexuality. W. Scott Poole's book shows that both the range and the scope of American religiousness made theological evil an especially potent symbol. Satan appears repeatedly on the political, religious, and cultural landscape of the United States, a shadow self to the sunny image of American progress and idealism.

The Devil We Know

Satan in America

Near Appomattox, during a cease-fire in the final hours of the Civil War, Confederate general Martin R. Gary harangued his troops to stand fast and not lay down their arms. Stinging the soldiers' home-state pride, Gary reminded them that "South Carolinians never surrender." By focusing on a reactionary hotbed within a notably conservative state--South Carolina's hilly western "upcountry"--W. Scott Poole chronicles the rise of a post-Civil War southern culture of defiance whose vestiges are still among us. The society of the rustic antebellum upcountry, Poole writes, clung to a set of values that emphasized white supremacy, economic independence, masculine honor, evangelical religion, and a rejection of modernity. In response to the Civil War and its aftermath, this amorphous tradition cohered into the Lost Cause myth, by which southerners claimed moral victory despite military defeat. It was a force that would undermine Reconstruction and, as Poole shows in chapters on religion, gender, and politics, weave its way into nearly every dimension of white southern life. The Lost Cause's shadow still looms over the South, Poole argues, in contemporary controversies such as those over the display of the Confederate flag. Never Surrender brings new clarity to the intellectual history of southern conservatism and the South's collective memory of the Civil War.

Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina Upcountry

Never Surrender

Explains monsters as concoctions of the public imagination, reactions to cultural influences, social change, and historical events; and making use of newspaper accounts, films, and oral histories presents a history of America that illustrates how the monstrous reflects society's fears and shapes historical behavior.

Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting

Jack Bass

As South Carolina enters into the fourth century of its storied existence, the state's captivating, colorful, and controversial history continues to warrant fresh explorations. In this sweeping story of defining episodes in the state's history, accomplished Southern historians Jack Bass and W. Scott Poole trace the key importance of race relations, historical memory, and cultural life in the progress of the Palmetto State from its colonial inception to its present incarnation. The authors bring a strong emphasis on the modern era to their briskly paced narrative, which advances work begun by Bass in his germinal investigation Porgy Comes Home: South Carolina after Three Hundred Years to further our understanding of the state as it now exists. Bass and Poole focus on three central themes—divisions of race and class, adherence to historical memory, and the interconnected strands of economic, social, and political flux—as they illustrate how these threads manifest themselves time and again across the rich tapestry of the South Carolina experience. The authors explore the centrality of race relations, both subtle and direct, in the state's development from the first settlement of Charles Towne to the contemporary political and economic landscape. The tragic histories of slavery and segregation and the struggles to end each in its era have defined much of the state's legacy. The authors argue that conflicts over race continue to influence historical memory in the state, most especially in still-evolving memories—nostalgic for some and ignominious for others—of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. And they find throughout the state's history a strong role for religion in shaping reaction to changing circumstances. In the discussion of contemporary South Carolina that makes up the majority of this volume, the authors delineate the state's remarkable transformation in the mid–twentieth century, during which a combination of powerful elements blended together through a dynamism fueled by the twin forces of continuity and change. Bass and Poole map the ways through which hard-won economic and civil rights advancements, a succession of progressive state leaders, and federal court mandates operated in tandem to bring a largely peaceful end to the Jim Crow era in South Carolina, in stark contrast to the violence wrought elsewhere in the South. Today there is a growing acceptance of the state's biracial common past and a heartfelt need to understand the significance of this past for the present and future that has come to define the modern Palmetto State. This volume speaks directly to those historical connections and serves as a valuable point of entrance for original inquiries into the state's diverse and complex heritage.

The Making of South Carolina

The Palmetto State

Edward J. Blum

Vale of Tears: New Essays in Religion and Reconstruction offers a window into the exciting work being done by historians, social scientists, and scholars of religious studies on the epoch of Reconstruction. A time of both peril and promise, Reconstruction in America became a cauldron of transformation and change. This collection argues that religion provided the idiom and symbol, as often the very substance, of those changes. The authors of this collection examine how African Americans and white Southerners, New England Abolitionists and former Confederate soldiers, Catholics and Protestants on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line brought their sense of the sacred into collaboration and conflict. Together, these essays mark an important new departure in a still-contested period of American history. Interdisciplinary in scope and content, it promises to challenge many of the traditional parameters of Reconstruction historiography. The range of contributors to the project, including Gaines Foster and Paul Harvey, will draw a great deal of attention from Southern historians, literary scholars, and scholars of American religion.

New Essays on Religion and Reconstruction

Vale of Tears

“A fascinating journey . . . The secret of Lovecraft revealed a page at a time. A must read for all true fans of horror.” —Jonny Coffin, owner of Coffin Case In the Mountains of Madness interweaves the biography of the legendary writer with an exploration of Lovecraft as a phenomenon. It aims to explain this reclusive figure while also challenging some of the general views held by Lovecraft devotees, focusing specifically on the large cross-section of horror and science fiction fans who know Lovecraft through films, role-playing games, and video games directly influenced by his work but know little or nothing about him. More than a traditional biography, In The Mountains of Madness places Lovecraft and his work in a cultural context, as an artist more in tune with our time than his own. In his provocative new book, Poole reclaims the true essence of Lovecraft in relation to the comics of Joe Lansdale, the novels of Stephen King, and some of the biggest blockbuster films in contemporary America, proving the undying influence of this rare and significant figure. “H.P. Lovecraft is having one hell of a resurgence. Luckily, the author of the man’s latest biography is the smart, shrewd, and insightful W. Scott Poole . . . What a wonderful testament to the lasting power and influence of H.P. Lovecraft.” —Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling “A deep plunge into the Lovecraft-ian dark side. Poole enthusiastically explores how H.P. Lovecraft influenced modern pop culture . . . thoroughly enjoyable and highly readable.” —Kirkus Reviews

W. Scott Poole

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