The Zombies Are Coming: The Realities of the Zombie Apocalypse in American Culture

by Kelly J. Baker

Zombie Runs. Zombie Guns. Zombie Preparation Classes. Look anywhere in America these days, and you're sure to find
the living dead. We have TV shows, comics, novels, and films all enthralled to the vision of a world post-zombie apocalypse.

But what's the line between fantasy and real life? Horror fiction and real danger? In today's zombie culture, that line is blurrier than ever. In this engaging, head-spinning ebook, zombie expert Kelly J. Baker shows us how our fascination with zombies has bled into far-reaching corners of American culture, including apocalypse preppers, gun shows, and even the federal government.

How do we know the zombies are coming? Because they're already here.

Genres: Zombies, Nonfiction, Horror, Monsters

200 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 6, 2013

About the author

Kelly is the author of Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930, The Zombies Are Coming!: The Realities of the Zombie Apocalypse in American Culture, Grace Period: A Memoir in Pieces, and Sexism Ed: Essays on Gender and Labor in Academia.

She's also the editor of Women in Higher Education, a feminist print monthly, and a freelance writer with a religious studies PhD who covers religion, higher education, gender, labor, motherhood, and popular culture.

She's written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Killing the Buddha, The Rumpus, Sacred Matters, Chronicle Vitae, Religion & Politics, Washington Post, and Brain, Child.

When she's not writing assignments or wrangling two children, she's writing a cultural history of zombie apocalypses and making her way toward a collection of essays about endings and other disasters.

Reviews

[Amy Wasson]

I liked this quote from the book, "The zombies are perilous, but so are we" (Baker, 2014). I was required to read a pop cultural book for my Sociology class. At first, I refused to read a book about zombies. I sampled all of the other potential books I was required to read and I did not like any of them. I checked out a sample of this book in an attempt to be more open minded. After all, my teenage son LOVES zombies. I thought I would hate a book about zombies, but it was a good read. It was easy to read and it was a quick read. I believe it was only about 100 pages long. This is a good book worth reading.

[Rosemary Moore]

Not bad overall. It's short, and much of the first half was familiar material. Where I thought the author really had something was in joining the zombie apocalypse fad to individualism and gun culture. I'd like to see more along that line of thinking. Otherwise, a little on the thin side in a couple of ways. My rating was rounded up from what I'd preferred to have given it, 3.5 stars.

[Alexa]

I read this book for class. Its a short but interesting. I read it in one sitting and had enough material to keep my attention.