A review by sistermagpie
Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting by W. Scott Poole

3.0

Pretty enjoyable read, but there was no big revelations. I think the problem was just that it covered such a lot of time--it was really just an overview, so it was impossible to really dig into different ideas. Each type of fear/monster could have been its own book (racism, slavery, war, dis-figuration, Roe vs. Wade, social upheaval etc.). In fact at times I found myself thinking about books referred to in the text that I'd read and thought how they spoke about things in more interesting ways.

I'm definitely going to go through the bibliography and filmography to check for anything I've missed, though!