Jeremy Dauber’s American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond is an excellent resource for horror fans and a sweeping exploration of how America’s deepest fears have shaped its literature, film, and popular culture. More than just a history of horror, Dauber argues that tracking the stories that unsettle us—those that provoke anxiety, terror, and even action—offers a unique way to map the history of America itself.

For many horror fans, our first encounter with someone seriously thinking about horror—not just watching the movies or reading the paperbacks—often comes unexpectedly. For me, it was the orange-and-black Crestwood House monster series, those slim, enticing library books that distilled classic horror films into something a child could devour. I remember the volumes on King Kong and Godzilla most vividly. Later came Fangoria and Danse Macabre, which is still a favorite—a jewel in the days before YouTube channels and an avalanche of books made deep horror analysis widely accessible.

Dauber’s approach is ambitious. He follows the genre’s evolution across multiple mediums: diaries, theater, radio, television, novels, pulp fiction, true crime, video games, and the ever-expanding horrors of the internet age. Dauber examines horror’s two essential faces—the cosmic and the intimate, the unknowable terror of God and the tangible terror of the killer next door. While tracing the genre’s relationship with folklore, legend, and true crime, he shows how horror and reality feed off each other while covering artists as disparate as Thomas Kyd, Doris Wishman, and Stephen Graham Jones.

The rest of the review is at Horror DNA: https://www.horrordna.com/books/american-scary-a-history-of-horror-from-salem-to-stephen-king-and-beyond-jeremy-dauber-book-review

As a horror fan, AMERICAN SCARY gives a really cool look into the genre and its history.

The book shows how horror mirrors America’s biggest fears with historical information from the Salem witch trials to today’s issues like climate change and tech advancements. It also explores how BIPOC, women, and LGBTQIA+ communities are represented, offering a view of the cultural forces that keep horror so relevant.

However, the book can feel dense at times. The opening sections rely heavily on direct quotes, making it challenging to connect with the author's original thoughts. Additionally, Dauber covers an overwhelming number of films, shows, and literature. While informative, this approach makes the book feel more like an academic research project than a compelling narrative. I eventually switched to the audiobook to help me push through.

It did discuss some of my all-time faves like It Follows and Scream Queens! That said, the book’s research and analysis are thorough, I just would have liked it to be a little shorter or focused. But still an interesting read!

As an avid fan of horror, this book's description and title appealed to me. It was well-researched and includes interesting discussion, but I also found it fairly bland and academic. It'll make a great addition to a horror critic's bookshelf.

Very interesting take on a subject not usually taken seriously. I love the focus on the history of America and it's contribution to today's horror.

A really interesting dive into the history of horror and all things scary. It also really digs into how horror is used to comment on our world and society at large. We can read these fantastical stories with real, obvious horrors that make our hair stand on end but then realize that those things repesent horrors of our everyday lives. Whle the real life horrors may not be as immediately goosebump-inducing as a ghost or monster, they are real and haunt people every day. This is perfect for the the people who love what's lurking under the surface. Dauber digs into the history of horror and how American history has sunk its claws into the genre. Similarly to the genre itself, this book balances historical stories with critiques on culture and how they manifest in different horror stories, movies, and more.

A great non-fiction read for spooky season and beyond!

Thank you to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for the copy in exchange for my honest review!

I first have to say that Jeremy Dauber put so much research into this book! I've been a horror book/movie junkie for a long time and I learned so many things I didn't know! This is a great book for anyone who wants to do a deep dive into history to see how the real world has shaped the horror we read and watch today. An excellent read!

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for a honest review.

I absolutely loved this book. It may be my favorite book of the year. It is an indepth examination of Horror as it pertains to the American experience. It starts off at the very beginning of American life at the revolution and ends today. It is one of the best academic looks at this often overlooked and underestimated genre.

I am so thankful to Algonquin Books, Jeremy Dauber, and Netgalley for granting me advanced access to this galley before publication day. I really enjoyed the dialogue and plot of this book and can’t wait to chat this one up with my friends!

American Scary is offers a comprehensive history of the horror genre (both fictional and nonfiction) in American culture, from the colonial era through the present day. This book traces the various cultural anxieties (various wars, moral panics, and violences of colonialism) that inform narrative trends (haunted houses, monster movies, witch stories of all kinds) and the arrival of new media (radio, television, and so on). I appreciated the detailed attention to the various trends in the genre, particularly in how recurring motifs, characters, and story types developed and changed over time and across media. I also appreciated the comprehensive focus on relevant examples. However, as the media landscape grew more densely populated by the 20th century, the list of examples became somewhat overwhelming, diluting the argumentative throughline. By the second half of the book, I often found myself wishing for more information on particular examples that intrigued me. I would also struggle to trace the argumentative connections between the different subtrends over time.

I appreciate this book as a one-stop source to identify the social anxieties reflected in the horror genre. While the argument gets diluted at points, this book operates as a comprehensive—if somewhat overwhelmingly detailed—overview.

Good for fans of:
A Season with the Witch by J.W. Ocker
Horror for Weenies by Emily C. Hughes
Ghostland by Colin Dickey

If you are interested in the cultural relevance and history of scary stories in America, you should check this book out. The writing style is accessible and humorous, and Dauber covers a huge swath of film, literature, and cultural history. It's a broad popular history book, and a good choice for spooky season if you aren't really down to be scared but you want to be lightly spooked.

My cons are that it was a little too long and my attention waxed and waned over time. 3.5 rounded up to 4 stars

My thanks to Algonquin Books for an early copy in exchange for my honest review!

It helps to have as broad a definition as possible for the genre when diving into AMERICAN SCARY, Jeremy Dauber’s history of horror. Yes, Stephen King and H. P. Lovecraft are here, as are Universal Pictures’ classic monsters. But Dauber casts his net wide, finding room to discuss films as varied as VERTIGO, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, and classic noirs without making them feel like detours. He also doesn’t shy away from politics, tying his thorough chronicle of the field into America’s history of slavery and immigration. It’s a fun, lively piece of work, with Dauber covering an impressive amount of terrain while keeping things fun. (I can’t fault anyone who correctly summarizes Herschell Gordon Lewis’s 1964 gorefest TWO THOUSAND MANIACS! as BRIGADOON meets BIRTH OF A NATION.) He’s as adept discussing modern horror film like GET OUT and IT FOLLOWS as he is fiction, highlighting the work of authors like Joe R. Lansdale, Sara Gran, and Tananarive Due. At times challenging, always engaging.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
This is a cumbersome but interesting book. Filled with historical facts and information from true crime and fictional. Definitely more geared toward someone interested in a more detailed history of the genre and not for someone looked for a light read.
I very much enjoyed it and it covered so much.

If you can manage to work Washington Irving and Buffy the Vampire Slayer into the same piece of nonfiction, you have my full attention.

This is a very dense but also very readable compendium of the history of American horror, and exceptionally completist in a good way.

If you’ve got a solid background in history and literature, most of the content in the early chapters won’t come as a surprise to you, though Dauber’s thoughts on it are still worth hearing even if the information is a bit basic.

The latter parts felt more like new information, especially with regard to some of the film criticism and social history informing horror films. There’s some overlap between this and Horror for Weenies, though the tone is very different.

I struggled a bit in the early-middle parts of the book, largely because the civil war stuff is more theory than criticism of actual content, which I didn’t love. Other than that, no complaints. Thoroughly researched, thoughtful, and well-paced.

American Scary by Jonathan Dauber is a great compendium on things that we fear from True Crime to scary movies to scary books and everything in between. He went back to the americas beginning with the first murder trial the witch hunt in Salem Oregon to yellow journalism Edgar Allan Poe Jonathan peel and everything in between. Even the things I knew nothing about only added to my TBR pile on my TV W Netflix account but ultimately I was very surprised at all the stuff I knew about the things I didn’t know about it I know this review is vague just know there’s too much in this book because it is very long to give a complete and total review this is a great book that I absolutely enjoyed and thought I would never finish but I did… Yay me! #NetGalley,#AlgonquinBooks, #JonathanDauber, #AmericanScary,

I was ready for a history lesson, not a lesson in literary criticism.

That may seem harsh, but for a reader like me who likes to read nonfiction for entertainment, asking me to read nearly 500 pages of text that reads as dry and flat as any textbook I read in college is asking a bit too much. I feel that’s even more applicable for me personally when it comes to the horror genre, which is my favorite movie genre and one of my top literary genres.

American Scary is very interesting, full of historical facts, figures, and events that influenced the horror genre tracing back to the 17th century in both Europe and in North America (since colonialism was all the rage back then). The book is well-researched and has an ample bibliography that’s obviously well-sourced. This is no slip-shod job, but it’s not going to be a book for every casual nonfiction reader. It’s very dense, packed with information, and the first third of the book may feel irrelevant to readers who don’t have an interest in horror that’s only literary in origin.

If you really enjoy in-depth examination of a genre or love a true examination of how history and art influencer one another over time, then this would be a great read for you.

I was provided a copy of the digital ARC of this title by the author and the publisher via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thanks also to the author and Algonquin Books for providing me with a copy of the physical ARC via their influencer program without expectation of review, positive or negative. All reviews rated three stars or lower will not appear on my social media. Thank you.

File Under: History/Nonfiction

As a relatively new convert to horror (I spent most of my life terrified of the genre and only engaging with it when I was pressured into it), I read an advanced copy of American Scary with great interest. Even though I was expecting more of a breezy, commercial read, I appreciated the depth in which Dauber explored this topic. It's fascinating and well researched.

I'll be honest - I did not expect a full-on history book. This book literally covers the history of scary in America before there even was an America. In a tone that alternates between scholarly treatise and colloquial conversation, the book covers the history of the scary story - across myriad formats and genres - and does so in a way that I cannot imagine being more thorough. As a result it is a bit of a tricky read, unless you are simultaneously a gigantic history buff and a gigantic oddities and facts buff and a gigantic horror buff. I enjoy all of those things but I'm not really a buff about any of them let alone all three, so reading for any length of time occasionally felt like a slog.

The level of detail and reference and citation and quotation is very intense. That's not to say I didn't find it interesting, because I did, just that it felt more like a reference book a lot of the time than a piece of narrative nonfiction. Things definitely picked up the pace as it moved into the modern era, and it did feel a little easier to read at that point. All in all it's a fantastic book that provides a really in-depth look at the subject - it just takes a while to get through it all ...

September is finally here and even though it’s still hot here I can detect a hint of 🍂 autumn 🍂in the air. It also means it is officially spooky season. I was lucky enough to receive this gifted copy of American Scary from @novelsuspects and @algonquinbooks and it was my most recent read and got me in the mood for spooky season. It also gave me a great deal of insight that will no doubt cause me to look at the books I read and the movies I watch differently and with a new depth of understanding.
Jeremy Dauber’s American Scary is an in-depth look at the history of horror in America. It asks the question what scares us and then ties it to the cultural landscape of the United States. It begins with colonial times and the hardships early settler faced, the witch trials and even into folk tales told by slaves. It looks in depth at the evolution of horror literature- from Lovecraft to Jackson to King. And of course there is horror in film. The eerie suspense films of Hitchcock to the cultural horror of Jordan Peele, it is all covered in this outstanding book.
I really enjoyed this book. It is not a quick read simply because it is packed with so much information, but I was glued to the pages throughout. I loved that in addition to being a history of the horror genre, it is also a cultural history of the United States. The way Dauber intertwines the two is fascinating. Hernandez dives deeply into the dark and ugly parts of our nation’s past and exposes our shame and then ties it to our collective fears.
This was such an interesting book. Well researched and packed with history yet it never felt like a textbook. I could not stop reading it. If you love horror pick this book up immediately. It is also perfect for people that love history and cultural analysis. I imagine this is a book a will refer back to for many years.

A must for libraries, this is an interesting resource. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher.

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Jeremy Dauber continues his great books after American Comics with American Scary that now takes a look at the history of horror in America from Stephen King to Jordan Peele.