Customer Reviews

Zombies: A Field Guide to the Walking Dead

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

 

 

[This review is part of my 31 Days of Halloween series.]

BBRRRRRRRRR...this is a spooky book--and a great source of supernatural history. The book jacket suggests lurid tales of the grave--and the contents deliver. The sensationalist "feel" of ZOMBIES is reflected in the graphics of Ian Daniels, and is maintained even in the fonts, chapter headings, and page numbering.

What a Great Pumpkin stuffer!

Author Bob Curran is a very gifted writer & researcher who has the rare talent to convey in popular style a treasure trove of historic material dating back to pre-history. This work documents the history & evolution of the Zombie. The universality of this myth may come as a surprise to readers.

ZOMBIES also features Ian Daniels' sci-fi/neo-gothic/Lovecraftian fantasy illustrations. Some are highly sexually charged. My personal favorites are Frankenstein, Constance Whitney, (body snatchers & murderers) Burke & Hare, Baron Samedi (who I actualy met once during Mardi Gras) & Zuvembie.

People interested in the paranormal will LOVE this book. People who love history will be impressed with this book--and people who love scary stories will really love this book.

ZOMBIES is FUN!

Here's a little taste:

· Did the Passion of Isis serve as a source for the Frankenstein story?

· Everyone knows that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead--but what became of Lazarus afterwards?

· The Holy Grail is a pagan symbol of resurrection that predated Christianity. Did it hold the Elixir of Life? How did it become Christianized?

· In the late 1800's a wealthy woman named Constance Whitney rose from the dead. What did her contemporaries write on her tombstone?

· Does Halloween open a door between the Living and the Dead?

· Body Snatchers were also called Resurrectionists.

· The origins & names of Voodoo Cults.

· Le Gran Zombie & other Voodoo deities.

· Zombies called forth to battle imperialism!

· Doctor John & the many faces of Marie Laveau.

· The Serpent & the Rainbow--fact or fiction?

· This and, oh, so much MORE!

Vampire: His Kith and Kin
The Val Lewton Horror Collection (Cat People / The Curse of the Cat People / I Walked with a Zombie / The Body Snatcher / Isle of the Dead / Bedlam / The Leopard Man / The Ghost Ship / The Seventh Victim / Shadows in the Dark)
The Best of Dr. John: The Night Tripper
George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
The Skeleton Key (Full Screen Edition)

I purchased this book to help prepare myself for the impending Zombie apocalypse that any reasonable person knows is coming. It might not be today, it might not be tomorrow, but it sure as hell is on the way, and I plan to be ready when it does. Movies do a good job of spreading awareness of the problem, but many of them seem think zombies are a laughing matter like in Shaun of the Dead. Computer games also help spread awareness and even teach useful tactics like (Left 4 Dead or System Shock 2). Even the absurdity of Zombies in space (as if we'll ever colonize space with the Zombie threat knocking at our door!) is more useful than this book at teaching zombie survival methodology.

ZOMBIES: A FIELD GUIDE TO THE WALKING DEAD is hardly a field guide at all. It's more like a history lesson. While I agree with Sun Tzu's The Art of War that knowing the enemy is essential to victory, there are very few tactical or strategic tips in this guide. If you want to know whether the Zombie that is attached to your neck is more like Germanic or African archtypes, or how the Zombies feasting on your neighbors relate to Haitian legends, this is the book for you. Personally I don't care about stories like the one about Constance Whitney and how she came back to life in the 1880s unless told in the context of how best to separate her head from her shoulders using a hatchet and send her soulless body back to the grave!

I also don't appreciate Bob Curran's tone in his so-called "Field Guide." He obviously does not take the Zombie threat seriously enough. In fact, it seems he doesn't believe in Zombies as anything more than psychological constructs or religious mythology! He needs to do more research into the many well documented Zombie attacks in the last hundred years. No mention is made of the fact that these attacks have been increasing both in frequency and intensity. Curran obviously is an intelligent, articulate man with a gift for research and writing. It will be a sad day when his disbelief and lack of preparation leads to his demise at the hands (or mouths!) of viscous Zombies.

If you like me will not sit idly by and wait for the Zombies to strike, I suggest reading the most important book on Zombies ever written: The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead instead of Curran's offering. It very well might save your life.

If on the other hand you are an egg-headed history buff with a brain the size of a ripe cantaloupe and you want to fill it with everything there is to know about the history of zombies except how to keep them at bay, then Curran's field guide will provide you with several hours of entertainment. Until the Zombie masses beat down your door.

We need to pull together in these troubled times and prepare for any and all Zombie attacks. If you are part of the growing number of patriots that realize that the Zombie threat is immediate and real, I beg you to take action. Don't just learn the historical context of our ruthless foes; join your local militia, buy a Katana, and most of all, always be vigilant!

Dr. Bob Curran has gained a reputation in the past few years for exploring the roots of those subjects paranormal enthusiasts are drawn to. After tackling the Green Man and Vampires, Dr. Curran decided to point his tireless research and pinpoint understanding at one of the lesser delved into supernatural monsters. The result is Zombies: A field Guide to the Walking Dead. With chapters ranging from grave robbers and half executed convicts to the misunderstood practices of the voodoo practitioners, the work serves as a reference book told in narrative form with some questions that point to who we are as a society.

See my interview with the author on Ghostville...

The book was not what I expected and is dull. It seems to be a paper for a graduate college class that was put in print. Information is repeated and the spelling and poor English usage reflected no or poor proof reading or non existent editing. Still, the book presented information that I did not have previous knowledge of but didn't really need it. I found the book dissatisfying and suggest Max Brook's books to anyone that is wanting a good read.

First off, I'm a huge fan of everything zombie. My first zombie film was Romero's Night of the Living Dead. I read many reviews on this book and purchased it. It's has GREAT zombie HISTORY and research information. This is by NO means a FIELD guide. A field guide is used to find pertinent information for immediate use. Survival field guides, medical field guides, etc. The title didn't ruin it for me, the area that it covers is broad. It's a great read, but most chapters are very brief. They could've made it a bit bigger and put more info in in the sections that are quite short. Just because a book is smaller doesn't make it a field guide. Good purchase.

This book is supposed to cover zombies in general and that is fine, but the art itself does not make merit to the topic mentioned, some of it looks ridiculous and there is also a female version from Frankenstein which is supposed to look nice but does not make sense when the book it narrating about the male one.

Also they cover information about Jesus and at that point it felt awkward, I'm not Cristian nor anything and I'm not sensible to these kind of things, but I'm reading a book about zombies and there is a mention on Jesus being resurrected and all... I know some people can go ballistic over such topic in the book.

This is not at all a bad book - it's generally a quick, good read. I think that the illustrations detract, but that is just me. This book is strong on detail, and ties together a lot of information from a lot of different places. This book is weak on organization and could have been edited more thoroughly. I like the information based on ancient cultures more than that based on current voodoo or American history, but those sections do include material that is infrequently treated.

This book truly is more about the entire history of walking dead than it is about zombies per se. It is best at rooting current zombie concepts in cultural history. But the material that it presents is rather a jumble and would have benefited from a much stronger hand in editing.

Dr. Bob Curran presents an eminently readable, indepth, and fascinating tome on the history of the walking dead. The title of this book is "Zombies" but to limit it to that specific term and its origins also limits the impact of this comprehensive history of many cultures perception of the corporeal forms of the undead that have come back for varied reasons, both fair and foul, since nearly the dawn of time.
This book does explore the origin of the classic Haiti zombie but goes much deeper than that, explaining ancient European forms of the undead, the African origins of voodoo, and a wide array of other versions of those who come back from the grave since ancient times including Egyptian mummies (and Japanese ones as well).

While it must be stressed that this is more of a historical journey than one that delves into the modern day movie monster (only brief passages allude to the works of George A. Romero and others) this is still something that any true fan of the walking dead can appreciate. Dr. Curran has done exhaustive research and presents his efforts in a very easily readible format that certainly could allow some creative writers out there to develop "new" strains of undead in their books and movies based on historical context, outside of the traditional voodoo variety that are displayed in this book, such as the Draugr, as just one example.

If you are at all interested in the supernatural and the afterlife/living dead, this is a book you should have on your reference shelf. It certainly gave me a far greater appreciation for the origins of humanities long time fascination with those that return from the dead.

There are many forms of the 'undead' to be found in myth, folklore and legend around the world. Perhaps one of the most commonly encountered is that of the living corpse called 'zombie'. In "Zombies: A Field Guide To The Walking Dead" written by folklore expert Bob Curran and enhanced with occasional black-and-white illustrations by Ian Daniels, we now have a comprehensive compilation of all of the variations of the zombie legends from various countries and cultures around the world, both ancient and contemporary. Tracing the evolution of the zombie mythos from Sumarian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Celtic antiquity, to the cataleptics of 18th century Europe, to the 'living mummies' of 19th century Japan, "Zombies" is a fascinating reader that is both informed and informative. A welcome addition to personal, academic, and community library Mythology/Folklore reference collections, Bob Curran's "Zombies" is especially recommended to fans of zombie stories in fiction and films.

Way more than you ever wanted to know about zombies from the point of view of a cultural anthropologist and folklore specialist. Mostly boring information that is either well known or of minor interest. For those with an academic interest in the history of zombies and related revenants. The book is indexed and contains a Bibliography, Ho-Hum. Buy a good novel, instead.