‘Shapeshifters’ and Other Trans-forming Humans
Supernatural Historian John Kachuba deftly demonstrates in Shapeshifters: A History that change is the only constant in life.
Jesse Kavadlo
Jesse Kavadlo was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and is happily settled in suburban St. Louis. He has been fascinated with angsty novels, monster movies, alienated superheroes, ironic dystopias, and heavy metal for a few decades. He has a Ph.D. in English from Fordham University, is a professor at Maryville University, and gigs as the guitarist and singer for an 80s hard rock cover band. He has published several dozen essays in academic journals and book collections as well as three books, most recently American Popular Culture in the Era of Terror: Falling Skies, Dark Knights Rising, and Collapsing Cultures (Praeger, 2015).
On Jennine Capó Crucet’s Course in Continuing Education, ‘My Time Among the Whites’
In her memoir My Time Among the Whites, Jennine Capó Crucet demonstrates that making your home among strangers is harder than it seems.
Never Ending Endings in ‘The Avengers: Endgame’ and ‘Game of Thrones’
In both The Avengers: Endgame and Game of Thrones, the key conflicts are not between good and evil, as one might think, but between the beginnings and endings of their stories.
Unlike Virgil, De Villiers Has a Sense of Humor About ‘Hell and Damnation’
Marq De Villiers' readers will readily discern where -- aside from abysses -- Hell and Damnation: A Sinner's Guide to Eternal Torment is headed: someplace unexpectedly fun.
Open Court’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Philosophy Emphasizes Caution and Awareness
As far as The Handmaid's Tale and Philosophy is concerned, Trump et al are the exact bastards you're not supposed to let grind you down.
The Valley of the Shadow of Megadeth
Reissues of The World Needs a Hero and The System Has Failed remind us that Megadeth has been coming back for years.
Through the Looking-Glass of Black Mirror’s ‘Bandersnatch’
Netflix's interactive movie, Bandersnatch, doesn't really offer choices, but it does offer something else: a warning.
‘Wasteland’, or, How We Went From World War I to White Walkers
In Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror, historian W. Scott Poole exhumes our obsession with the living dead.
On the 30th Anniversary of Anthrax’s ‘State of Euphoria’
With State of Euphoria, Anthrax tempered some of the excessive '80s metal tendencies of their vocal, lead guitar, and song arrangements, reaching back toward something more viscerally punk as the '80s ended.
Blundering Blindly in the Corridors of Imagination: An Interview with Paul Auster
Forget everything you think you know about Paul Auster, as with the release of his New York Trilogy manuscripts, the award-winning author talks typewriters, telephones, and why he doesn’t think of himself as a novelist.
The End of Endings: How ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ and Don DeLillo’s ‘Zero K’ Explain the Current State of Storytelling
Somehow, without realizing it, for both DeLillo and Rowling, death, the end of the world, and endings themselves are best emblematized by a dysfunctional father/son relationship.
Is Slash Living the Dream?
What's the point of being the greatest guitarist in a world that doesn't care about guitarists anymore? Considering Slash's Living the Dream.