Customer Reviews

The Encyclopedia of Hell

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book was sorely disappointing. I expected a work that contained serious entries on various hell/afterlife-related topics-something that could be used as a reference. Instead, this book is a hodgepodge of entries on everything from Babylonian mythology to popular movies like Flatliners. Just to give you an idea of what's actually in this book, there are entries on "Gift Novelties," "Country Music," "Movie Merchandising," "Jokes," and Stephen King's "Rose Madder." Notable missing entries include Virgil (Dante's guide through the Inferno), Ugolino (one of the most lasting images from the Inferno, and the basis of many modern poems, including one by Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney), Pandaemonium (the capital city of Hell from Milton's Paradise Lost), Neutral Angels (those who didn't take sides in Lucifer's war on God, and who were damned for not siding with God), Beezelbub (a Biblical demon), Baal (identified with Beezelbub in the Bible), and Sin. I stopped looking at that point, or I'd have a much longer list. The entries that are in this book leave a lot to be desired. "Satan" gets a column and a half, while "Saturday Night Live" gets more than two. One of the longest entries is for Clive Barker, who gets two and a half pages, and who is one of the people listed in her Acknowledgements. The entries are very simplistic and often either wrong or so lacking in substance as to be next to useless.

Unless your primary interest is pop-culture versions of Hell in the late 20th century, and you don't mind getting less useful information than you could find on Google in about thirty seconds, pass on this book.

Over all, this is a decent book. However, be aware that there are some inaccuracies, possibly based on the author's personal biases. For example, Olodumare is not an underworld deity in the Yoruba pantheon, and neither is Obatala an underworld judge. Also, Wotan (Germanic) and Erlik (Siberian) are not deities who fell "out of grace" with a higher ('good') divinity. There are many more such examples. Either the author has deliberately skewed the information, or her sources are inaccurate. If you are buying this book in order to do serious research, be prepared to cross reference with other sources--preferably the originals.

Perhaps, my expectations of this book were too high. I was looking for an amusing, yet somewhat historically thorough book. It did indeed have many underworld entities I had never heard of before. However, there were also ridiculous entries that in my opinion, were wasting space: comic books, video games, David Letterman (for saying, "this show's going to hell"). What is that? The only entry I immediately recall not finding is "Diablo"... they at least could have put it under video games... I mean, they had "Doom".

Miriam Van Scott's Encyclopedia of Hell is chock full of interesting definitions, descriptions, and anecdotes concerning many different aspects of devils, demons, occultists, and various underworld myths from across a wide range of religions and cultures. It contains brief descriptions of many lesser-known or obscure demonic and diabloic charaters and often long entries for other rather well-known people and places. Overall, this book is quite interesting and serves as a good quick reference guide. However, any encyclopedia of Hell is going to be a major affair that would seriously require seveal volumes. There has yet to be a truly all-inclusive effort to describe the myths and legends of the Underworld and everything related to the afterlife and the damnation of the soul. This books does its best to cover everything but falls short of being the last word on Hell.

Miriam Van Scott's Encyclopedia of Hell is a mildly entertaining book. It is an assortment of everything hellish, or demonic. It is a media based book about angels, demons, devils and the super natural. It gives illustrations and vivid descriptions of demons and covers many different aspects of hell or demonic things over the ages. It shows how hell is viewed by other cultures and religions. It also shows the strong influence of hell in our society today through advertising and movies. Overall this was an informative book.

If you are looking for serious and scholarly documentation regarding hell, this isn't the book for you. With that being said...I found this book informative especially from a media based standpoint. Many things that had any reference to hell can be found in here and some unexpected like Saturday Night Live. I think this is a good book for background information on a variety of subjects relating to hell but it is by no means a 100% complete comprehensive culmination of Hell. A agree with a previous reviewer saying that a complete encyclopedia of hell that would make the rest of the reviewers happy would have to contain many volumes and even then would it even be possible to be complete? It is a decent reference for things relating to hell and if you are doing research, like any good research you should not only have one source.

This is an interesting accumulation of anything and everything related to Hell. The book is media based, but I found it informative and not dense, making it easier to get through. I enjoyed the different views on hell from other cultures, relgions, times throughout history. To me this different interpretations or views add to the informative level of this book and provide such a wide variety for people to relate with. I rather enjoyed the prominent media compenent of this book because I think right now the media is increasingly prevalent. I commend the author for taking on such a dense and difficult untagible subject such as hell.

Well, it is just what it says, a nice center of information about hell, the number of qoutes are amazing, i cpuld be a little bit more detalied but its enough to start an investigation.

This book is a perfect example of pop culture bubblegum pap. It deals with such topics as bubblegum cards and t-shirts but either doesn't mention or very, very superficially such things as: Paradise Lost, Dante's Inferno, the Hieararchy of Hell, The Catholic Church's View of, Demons, Demonology, and so on. This book is truly useless and a waste of time. I can understand if the book was written for 1-6 year olds, it might be entertaining and of some interest but for anyone with any intelligence and/or education it is just horribly bad. So, save yourself some time and money and avoid this purchase. Spend the money to buy anything but this book. Avoid at all costs, can produce mindnumbing stupidity in readers.

Encyclopedia of Hell by Miriam Van Scott (Author) is another collection in dictionary style format (much like the book of angels, demons, and fairies reviewed earlier on the site here) which presents a very thorough overview of everything devilish from ancient cultures to modern day advertising. A very engrossing and interesting read, although its layout seems very academic, the entries are highly entertaining and make up for the academic approach this book provides. From Abadadon to Zoraster, this book covers it all, a great reference for those looking to spice up their library and get a better overview of how pervasive the influence of hell is in modern day society.