Encyclopedia of Hell (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Abbadon, the Hebrew word for "destruction," is the biblical dwelling place of the dead found in both the Old and New Testaments..." (more)
Key Phrases: Twilight Zone, Don Juan, Night Gallery (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Miriam Van Scott outpaces Dante...a Thomas Guide to the Dark Side." --Detour magazine

"With entries ranging from Dante's Inferno to the 1994 noir film Dark Angel: The Ascent, Van Scot's hellacious handbook entertains as it guides readers through a cultural history of Hell." --Publishers Weekly

"Fascinating reading...Van Scott's fine research and treatment of the material enables the reader to grasp specific points with great depth. All libraries will do well to add such a contemporary title." --Library Journal

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description

The first and only book to organize the available wide-ranging, cross-cultural history of Hell and its various interpretations, "Encyclopedia of Hell" offers depictions of Hades from film, television, music, classical literature, religion, art, myth, and theater.

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Product Details Hardcover: 308 pages Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; 1st edition (August 1998) Language: English ISBN-10: 031218574X ISBN-13: 978-0312185749 Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews) Amazon.com Sales Rank: #252,806 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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First Sentence:
Abbadon, the Hebrew word for "destruction," is the biblical dwelling place of the dead found in both the Old and New Testaments. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Twilight Zone, Don Juan, Night Gallery, Middle Ages, Jesus Christ, Don Giovanni, Roman Catholic, The Pilgrim, Garden of Eden, Old Testament, The Great Divorce, City of God, Dai Mokuren, Freddy Kruger, Grim Reaper, Land of No Return, Stephen King, Christian Bible, Dante's Inferno, Dark Tower, Gospel of Nicodemus, Iron Maiden, Vault of Horror, Land of Darkness, New Testament

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 87 books:

• The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso) by Dante Alighieri on 36 pages
• Divine Comedy (Oxford World's Classics) by Dante Alighieri on 36 pages
• Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics) by John Milton on 12 pages
• The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis on 7 pages
• The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Shambala Pocket Classics) by Chogyam Trungpa on 6 pages

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2 books cite this book:

• The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness (Carolyn and Ernest Fay Series in Analytical Psychology) by Stanton Marlan in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
• Dark Archetype by Denise Dumars in Back Matter

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	27% buy the item featured on this page: Encyclopedia of Hell 3.4 out of 5 stars (14)
	27% buy A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels and Other Subversive Spirits 3.8 out of 5 stars (44) $11.56
	24% buy Dictionary of Angels: Including the Fallen Angels 4.3 out of 5 stars (68) $14.28
	12% buy The History of Hell 4.5 out of 5 stars (21) $14.96

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Customer Reviews

14 Reviews 5 star:  (5) 4 star:  (2) 3 star:  (3) 2 star:  (1) 1 star:  (3)           Average Customer Review 3.4 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews 131 of 133 people found the following review helpful: 1.0 out of 5 stars Terribly disappointing..., March 25, 2005 By  DesertKnight (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews This review is from: The Encyclopedia of Hell (Paperback) 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. 31 of 33 people found the following review helpful: 3.0 out of 5 stars Cum Grano Salis, October 25, 2000 By A Customer 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. 26 of 31 people found the following review helpful: 2.0 out of 5 stars a bit displeasing, January 24, 2000 By A Customer This review is from: The Encyclopedia of Hell (Paperback) 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".		Ad feedback   Most Recent Customer Reviews 1.0 out of 5 stars Not Available I've tried to order this book twice and both times I was under the impression the book was in stock only to receive an email a day or two later stating the book was unavailable... Read more Published 2 months ago by Kendra Kane 3.0 out of 5 stars good not great I feel like the view of Miriam van Scott's book is too condemning of most thing. She places in Hell Hollywood movies which we all know are works of fiction. Read more Published 9 months ago by Francine Price 1.0 out of 5 stars Ridiculously Bad, covered such topics as t-shirts and bubble gum cards but absolutely nothing of real interest. 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... Read more Published 16 months ago by Alex Fuentes 4.0 out of 5 stars A real contact fromHell 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... Read more Published 21 months ago by Gabriel Campos Díaz 3.0 out of 5 stars Useful, but needs more hell stuff Though I found some of this product useful and I use it for the purposes that I need to use it for. the amount of movies, and modern stuff listed in it including cheesy b budget... Read more Published on July 8, 2007 by Victoria Ehli 5.0 out of 5 stars A Note from the Author I'm not sure what motivated the review that contends much is "missing" from this book or if that reviewer was somehow confused, but I wanted to set the record straight. Read more Published on July 14, 2006 by Miriam Van Scott 5.0 out of 5 stars Its Media - If you like Media . . . I first found this book on the shelves of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Bible study reference section. Read more Published on April 19, 2005 by Barry Parker 5.0 out of 5 stars the entries are highly entertaining 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... Read more Published on June 7, 2004 by imdateless 4.0 out of 5 stars Good, But Not Definative 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... Read more Published on July 8, 2002 by Matthew S. Schweitzer 5.0 out of 5 stars ARIANA LUJAN(NOTHING) IT WAS AN AMAZINE BOOK AND I LOVED IT, I THINK THE WHOLE WORLD SHOULD READ IT, BUT ITS KINDA HARD TO READ BUT JUST GET BACK ON AND READ ITS, GOOD Published on May 21, 1999 Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 308 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; 1st edition (August 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031218574X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312185749
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #252,806 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

131 of 133 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terribly disappointing..., March 25, 2005

By	DesertKnight (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Encyclopedia of Hell (Paperback)

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.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Cum Grano Salis, October 25, 2000

By A Customer

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.

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars a bit displeasing, January 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Encyclopedia of Hell (Paperback)

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".