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I am a historian of twentieth century Germany and the Holocaust, but I am also a voracious consumer of popular culture. How do I justify spending so much time watching and analyzing horror and science fiction film and television? Well, write a book about it, of course. The first thing I realized is that many other brilliant scholars have thought about why this imagery permeates contemporary culture, even if I asked different questions about why. I hope you are as inspired and enlightened by this book list as I was.
Before you can understand contemporary manifestations of zombies and vampires in shows like The Walking Dead or The Strain, it helps to know the long and varied cultural history of these monsters. Gregory Waller explores how each generation imagined and interpreted zombies and vampires, both in print and on-screen. How do they speak to our fears and prejudices, or even desires? I found it very helpful in writing Planet Auschwitz.
With a legacy stretching back into legend and folklore, the vampire in all its guises haunts the film and fiction of the twentieth century and remains the most enduring of all the monstrous threats that roam the landscapes of horror. In The Living and the Undead, Gregory A. Waller shows why this creature continues to fascinate us and why every generation reshapes the story of the violent confrontation between the living and the undead to fit new times. Examining a broad range of novels, stories, plays, films, and made-for-television movies, Waller focuses upon a series of interrelated texts: Bram Stoker's…
Poems irritated me as a child. They seemed parodies of counting, chants of rhythm, and repetition. I included them in my moratorium against reading fiction. On the other hand, I respected the alphabet, a kind of poem of pure form. It was orderly for no good reason and didn't mean anything. So I concluded that poems were meaningless forms that had their uses, but were not serious. I changed my mind, but it took a while—studying math and science, theology, and then philosophy and literature. I'm now a professor who studies and teaches modern literature and philosophy. I got my Ph.D. from Harvard, became a professor at Stanford, and teach at the University of Dallas.
A photograph gives me the form of the bird, but it remains up to me to see the bird as a bird. And that can be difficult. What do we see when we see a bird?
The Peregrine, J. A. Baker’s masterpiece of descriptive prose, provides an answer, an answer that is as much about how we see as it is about what we see when we see birds. Sometimes we pull ourselves into the sight of others and the world emerges as more than its light. We see by being seen.
Baker achieves this kind of seeing both in his efforts to see a pair of peregrines and in his description of this achievement.
David Attenborough reads J. A. Baker's extraordinary classic of British nature writing.
The nation's greatest voice, David Attenborough, reads J. A. Baker's extraordinary classic of British nature writing, The Peregrine.
J. A. Baker's classic of British nature writing was first published in 1967. Greeted with acclaim, it went on to win the Duff Cooper Prize, the pre-eminent literary prize of the time. Luminaries such as Ted Hughes, Barry Lopez and Andrew Motion have cited it as one of the most important books in twentieth-century nature writing.
Despite the association of peregrines with the wild, outer reaches of the British Isles,…
I am an archaeologist, writer, and university lecturer, who spends his days dreaming of being on the move. I was filled with life-long wanderlust from a peripatetic childhood living in Malaysia, Fiji, and Cyprus, and this sense of needing to move around has never left me. I am a passionate walker and have rambled and roamed and trekked and trailed around most of the British Isles, often with my (occasionally willing) family. This has led to an intense fascination with the way people moved around in the past and how they knew where they were going, and I have centred much of my research, and my writing, on the subject.
For me the best book on walking is by the German film director Werner Herzog.
In 1974 Herzog was told that his friend, the film historian Lotte Eisner, was dying. In what can perhaps be described as a fugue state Herzog pulled on his boots, grabbed a jacket and compass, and set off on a monumental, almost shamanic, journey from his home in Munich to her deathbed in Paris, believing his act of walking would keep her alive.
The journey took three weeks and Herzog walked through the thick of winter. On arrival, Eisner had already recovered. Of Walking in Ice is Herzog’s diary charting this incredible pilgrimage. Tender, beautiful, and genuinely insightful, I’ve read this short book over and over again. It’s probably time I read it again!
In late November 1974, filmmaker Werner Herzog received a phone call from Paris delivering some terrible news. German film historian, mentor, and close friend Lotte Eisner was seriously ill and dying. Herzog was determined to prevent this and believed that an act of walking would keep Eisner from death. He took a jacket, a compass, and a duffel bag of the barest essentials, and wearing a pair of new boots, set off on a three-week pilgrimage from Munich to Paris through the deep chill and snowstorms of winter."Of Walking in Ice" is Herzog's beautifully written, much-admired, yet often-overlooked diary account…
Extensive research on cultural production by Latin American authors of Asian ancestry has given me a comprehensive understanding of the development of Transpacific studies. For the last decade, my research has focused, for the most part, on South-South intercultural exchanges and cultural production by and about Latin American authors of Asian descent. I have written five books dealing with these topics: 2008 Imaging the Chinese in Cuban Literature and Culture (2009), The Affinity of the Eye: Writing Nikkei in Peru (2013), Dragons in the Land of the Condor: Writing Tusán in Peru (2014), Japanese Brazilian Saudades: Diasporic Identities and Cultural Production (2019), and The Mexican Transpacific: Nikkei Writing, Visual Arts, Performance (forthcoming).
Between Empires compares the anti-imperial literature and history of two former Spanish colonies, Cuba and the Philippines, but this time focusing on the late-nineteenth-century “intercolonial alliance” and, more specifically, on the oeuvres of two nationalist authors and national heroes: the Cuban José Martí and the Filipino José Rizal. Hagimoto explores a transpacific collective consciousness of resistance as well as the shared historical ties between Latin America and the Philippines. What I found more exciting about this book was that it reveals how, led by two national heroes and martyrs, there was still, well after the end of the Manila Galleon transpacific route, an end-of-nineteenth-century anti-colonial alliance between two far-away countries united by a shared history of colonial domination and oppression.
In 1898, both Cuba and the Philippines achieved their independence from Spain and then immediately became targets of US expansionism. This book presents a comparative analysis of late-nineteenth-century literature and history in Cuba and the Philippines, focusing on the writings of Jose Marti and Jose Rizal to reveal shared anti-imperial struggles.
Soon after 9/11, I had dinner with several American scientists worried about how new security measures would affect international collaborations and foreign-born colleagues. Since science rarely if ever comes up in discourse about the War on Terror, that set me off. I’m always drawn to whatever gets overlooked. I was born in one international city – New York – and have lived in another – Los Angeles – for over 20 years. I’ve spent time on four continents and assisted survivors of violent persecution as they seek asylum – which may explain why I feel compelled to include viewpoints from outside the US and fill in the gaps when different cultural perspectives go missing.
Sometimes I read a book and wish I’d written it. With Insurrecto, I cheered and gave thanks that Gina Apostol did write it. Decades ago, I became obsessed with the US conquest of the Philippines after the Spanish American War and how the people of the islands fought back to liberate their country. I knew Mark Twain protested the occupation. I found military histories of the war against Spain. At that time, I couldn’t find anything from the Filipino perspective. Where were books to challenge the American belief we’ve never had colonies? Apostol brings this lost history brilliantly to life with a contemporary filmmaker and a translator who create dueling narratives while trying to make a movie about a 1901 massacre.Insurrecto is a remarkable work, complex enough to repay rereading.
Histories and personalities collide in this literary tour-de-force about the Philippines’ present and America’s past by the PEN Open Book Award–winning author of Gun Dealers’ Daughter.
Two women, a Filipino translator and an American filmmaker, go on a road trip in Duterte’s Philippines, collaborating and clashing in the writing of a film script about a massacre during the Philippine-American War. Chiara is working on a film about an incident in Balangiga, Samar, in 1901, when Filipino revolutionaries attacked an American garrison, and in retaliation American soldiers created “a howling wilderness” of the surrounding countryside.…
As a kid, I didn’t identify with the gender I was assigned at birth. Even without the language to describe who I really was, I was always on the lookout for stories about other people who felt like I did—for stories, in other words, like the ones on this list. But I never found them. As the books below beautifully illustrate, the spectrum of transgender experience, and our childhoods in particular, are so rich and diverse. My hope is for these and other books like Cactus Country to encourage more trans and queer people to tell their stories so that kids like us can find characters that represent them.
Fairest by Meredith Talusan is an incisively observant memoir of class, ability, and whiteness, among many other subjects.
I was so enthralled by Talusan’s compelling story about living with albinism and passing as white, first in the Philippines as a child, which led to a television acting career, and later in the United States as an adult. Talusan’s deft descriptions of her journey from childhood stardom to her education at Harvard to her eventual coming out and transition hooked me from the first page and made this book so difficult to put down.
Finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction
"Talusan sails past the conventions of trans and immigrant memoirs." --The New York Times Book Review
"A ball of light hurled into the dark undertow of migration and survival." --Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
A love story with the heart of Austen classics and a reflective journey of becoming that shift our own perceptions of romance, identity, gender, and the fairness of life.
Fairest is a memoir about a precocious boy with albinism, a "sun child" from a rural Philippine village, who would grow up to…
As a native Oregonian of Polish descent, I was born in the small town of Sweet Home, Oregon. After finishing high school, I moved to Portland where I graduated from Lewis and Clark College with a Master’s degree in psychology. I spent twelve years as a psychotherapist, publishing over a dozen articles. After joining a writing group and trying my hand at fiction, my stories, articles, and poems have been published in magazines and newspapers—including Sarasota Herald-Tribune, The Oregonian, Catholic Sentinel, Dziennik Związkowy, and The Polish American Journal. My debut novel, Victoria’s War, won CIBA’s Hemingway Award for 20th Century Wartime Fiction and was #1 Best Seller on Amazon Kindle Unlimited in German Historical Fiction.
I loved this enchanting WWII story about two heroic women: Tess, an orphan turned US Army nurse, and Flor, a Filipina university student living in glamorous Manila where Tess is stationed. These resilient women face unimaginable challenges with hope and humility. Hooper’s storytelling amazed me from the moment I started reading.
Hooper’s Angels of the Pacific spoke to my heart like the music of great composers, revealing an unforgettable and little-known chapter of WWII history, inspired by the true story of 78 American nurses who were captured and imprisoned by the Japanese in Bataan. Hooper masterfully brings to life this awe-inspiring tale of sisterhood, bravery, sacrifice, and love.
"Absolutely riveting. A stay-up-all night read about two very different women who discover just how strong they can be-and just how much they'll dare-during the brutal Japanese occupation of the Philippines in World War II. This story of endurance and sisterhood will have you turning pages late into the night." -Lauren Willig, New York Times bestselling author
If you loved Beantown Girls by Jane Healey and Hazel Gaynor's When We Were Young & Brave, then you won't want to miss critically acclaimed author Elise Hooper's powerful new novel of the Angels of Bataan, nurses held as prisoners during the occupation…
I was 13 years a soldier and saw combat in Vietnam. There I met some of the finest men this country has ever produced and became hooked on the exploits of brave men. I have written many books about men—and women—in peril, and strive always for accurate accounts.
The author recreated as a novel the adventures of a handful of Navy officers whose tiny Patrol Torpedo Boats more than held their own against the full might of the Japanese Navy during the fall of the Philippines. Told in the first person by three of the principal characters, we meet Douglas MacArthur, seasick and soaking wet, as he flees Manila in an overloaded PT Boat, and eventually reaches a smaller island from which he is flown to safety in Australia. And we see and are in awe, of these young naval officers. In 1951, when I was ten and perched on my father's shoulders, I saw MacArthur from just a few feet away as he passed during a Chicago parade. I became fascinated with the man and his legend, and here he is presented as a very human creature.
A national bestseller when it was originally published in 1942 and the subject of a 1945 John Ford film featuring John Wayne, this book offers a thrilling account of the role of the U.S. Navy's Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Three during the disastrous Philippine campaign early in World War II. The author uses an unusual, but thorough, spellbinding format to tell the story: an interview with four heroic young participants. Ranked "with the great tales of war" by the Saturday Review of Literature, it is a deeply moving book that describes the four officers' extraordinary exploits from the first appearance…
As a professor of Communication, Environmental, and Native American Studies, Bruce E. Johansen taught, researched, and wrote at the University of Nebraska at Omaha from 1982 to 2019, retiring to emeritus status as Frederick W. Kayser research professor. He has published 55 books in several fields: history, anthropology, law, the Earth sciences, and others. Johansen’s writing has been published, debated, and reviewed in many academic venues, among them the William and Mary Quarterly, American Historical Review, Current History, and Nature, as well as in many popular newspapers and magazines. He's married to Patricia E. Keiffer, whose father, mother, and older sister were interned in the camp. Patricia was born there shortly before liberation.
This is evidence of the enduring appeal of the Santo Tomas story. More than half a century after the events that it describes, Cogan makes good use of interviews and printed sources. The Japanese Internment of American Civilians in the Philippines is especially valuable for its scholarly tone and comprehensive nature. It described the lives of internees in several camps.
More than five thousand American civilian men, women, and children living in the Philippines during World War II were confined to internment camps following Japan's late December 1941 victories in Manila. Captured tells the story of daily life in five different camps-the crowded housing, mounting familial and international tensions, heavy labor, and increasingly severe malnourishment that made the internees' rescue a race with starvation. Frances B. Cogan explores the events behind this nearly four-year captivity, explaining how and why this little-known internment occurred. A thorough historical account, the book addresses several controversial issues about the internment, including Japanese intentions toward…
I like to go on trips, particularly overseas. This gives me the ability to write travel books—but moreover, I love adventure. I love to see the fantastic in the world in which we live. I’ve written other kinds of books that helped shape my writing style, including a kaiju novel series, which gives me a bit of a different approach than more encyclopedic travel writers. That’s what I try to bring to the table—the magic and esotericism in the world, presented like a pulpy Saturday matinee that you can enter yourself if you follow my travel tips.
The Aswang mythology of the Philippines is fascinating and storied, a menagerie of creatures as horrific as any from Transylvania. This novel by a Filipina-Canadian author about a young man returning to his roots to find more werewolfery than he bargained for delves into its fascinating lore with cultural authenticity.
A teenage boy discovers family in the last way anyone wants to: as bloodthirsty monsters from the countryside.
Pablo Santos probably shouldn't try to crack the secret question to his dad's email account. Probably. But after getting into trouble in school yet again--for something that he swears wasn't his fault--he decides to run off to the countryside with his best friend, Rachel Ann, to discover the answer to such a mind-numbingly simple question: "Where was my father born?" Because Pablo knows nothing about his father and even less about his past.
Come and explore the Bicol countryside with Pablo and…
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