Dear Commons Community,

Summer is here and so has fun reading.  Over the weekend, I finished, The Modern Myths: Adventures in the Machinery  of Popular Imagination by Philip Ball.  

Published by the University of Chicago Press, it is a serious book that explores literature, new media and technology, and the making of some of our most provocative tales.  Ball covers in depth the stories of Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, The War of the Worlds, Sherlock Holmes, and Batman.  Ball states that these modern myths “touch on our deepest fears, dreams, and anxieties as we keep returning to them and reinventing them for new uses.”

Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal comments that  “The Modern Myths is a very impressive piece of writing. It is sharp. It is witty. It is deeply insightful in too many places to list. Ball’s erudition on these topics is extraordinary, really. How did he read all of this? And how did he see all of these movies? Does he sleep? A very fine study of seven really important stories in modern literature, fantasy, and film.”

Try it – you’ll like it!

Tony

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