A fully updated edition of "the ultimate book on Dracula "—an interdisciplinary approach to the perennial blockbuster attraction from a horror authority ( Newsweek ).

The primal image of the black-caped vampire Dracula has become an indelible fixture of the modern imagination. It's recognition factor rivals, in its own perverse way, the familiarity of Santa Claus. Most of us can recite without prompting the salient characteristics of the vampire: sleeping by day in its coffin, rising at dusk to feed on the blood of the living; the ability to shapeshift into a bat, wolf, or mist; a mortal vulnerability to a wooden stake through the heart or a shaft of sunlight.

In this critically acclaimed excursion through the life of a cultural icon, David J. Skal maps out the archetypal vampire's relentless trajectory from Victorian literary oddity to movie idol to cultural commodity, digging through the populist veneer to reveal what the prince of darkness says about us all.

Includes black-and-white Illustrations throughout, plus a new Introduction.

"Tracks Transylvania's most popular vampire with dry wit and the skills of a fine detective." ― The New York Times Book Review

"Witty, comprehensive . . . For those who take Halloween seriously, this is something to gnaw on long after those trick-or-treaters are gone." ― The Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Meticulously researched, engagingly written and packed with rare, archival images . . . The history of Dracula reads like a novel itself." ― The San Francisco Bay Guardian