Monsters in America

Monsters arrived in 2011âand now they are back. Not only do they continue to live in our midst, but, as historian Scott Poole shows, these monsters are an important part of our pastâa hideous obsession America cannot seem to escape. Poole's central argument in Monsters in America is that monster tales intertwine with America's troubled history of racism, politics, class struggle, and gender inequality. The second edition of Monsters leads readers deeper into America's tangled past to show how monsters continue to haunt contemporary American ideology. By adding new discussions of the American West, Poole focuses intently on the Native American experience. He reveals how monster stories went west to Sand Creek and Wounded Knee, bringing the preoccupation with monsters into the twentieth century through the American Indian Movement. In his new preface and expanded conclusion, Poole's tale connects to the presentâillustrating the relationship between current social movements and their historical antecedents. This proven textbook also studies the social location of contemporary horror films, exploring, for example, how Get Out emerged from the context of the Black Lives Matter movement. Finally, in the new section "American Carnage," Poole challenges readers to assess what their own monster tales might be and how our sordid past horrors express themselves in our present cultural anxieties. By the end of the book, Poole cautions that America's monsters aren't going away anytime soon. If specters of the past still haunt our present, they may yet invade our future. Monsters are here to stay.

"Poole brings to life American horror stories by framing them within folk belief, religion, and popular culture, broadly unraveling the idea of the monster. Thanks to Poole's insights we see the ubiquity of the monster lurking in and around us." John David Smith, Charles H. Stone Distinguished Professor of American History, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Poole's connection of the monster to American history is a kind of Creature Features meets American cultural history. Here we not only meet such monsters but also discover America's cultural monstrosity." John W. Morehead, editor, www.TheoFantastique.com, "An unexpected guilty pleasure! Poole invites us into an important and enlightening, if disturbing, conversation about the very real monsters that inhabit the dark spaces of Americas past." J. Gordon Melton, Director, Institute for the Study of American Religion, "A well informed, thoughtful, and indeed frightening angle of vision to a persistent and compelling American desire to be entertained by the grotesque and the horrific." Gary Laderman, Professor of American Religious History and Cultures, Emory University, "With Monsters in America, W. Scott Poole has given us a guidebook for a journey into nightmare territory. Insightful and brilliant!" Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of Patient Zero and Dead of Night

W. Scott Poole grew up in love with monsters. Now a tenured professor of American History at the College of Charleston, South Carolina, he teaches popular courses on America and its monsters as well as on the image of the Devil in religion and popular culture. He is the author of several books including Satan in America: The Devil We Know and is a regular contributor to www.popmatters.com , an international magazine of cultural criticism.