An Illustrated History of Ghosts (The Illustrated History Of)

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Occasionally I felt it made light of or was critical of certain cultures and beliefs, while also pushing a particular opinion/agenda, which made me question some of the 'facts' I was being presented. I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers. As we move into Halloween weekend, what better time to talk about “An Illustrated History of Ghosts”.

It covers ghost stories, ghosts in media, haunted houses, places, objects, ghost hunters, ghosts in different cultures…the list goes on. His first Nobrow title 'An Illustrated History of Filmmaking' has received high praise and has been translated into over five languages. The books is then split into chapters covering different centuries, highlighting the types of ghost that are linked to each century.It touches many different topics, such as the different types of ghosts within different cultures and their influence on films and literature. An Illustrated History of Ghosts provides a great overview of all things relating to ghosts from ghost catching, to haunted locations, to the pranksters themselves.

I think this one appealed to me a little bit more, guess I’m just more of a ghost fan than aliens, but I feel that each of these works, with their useful glossaries and resources, would be quite appropriate for teens and preteens who are interested in outré subjects. The book begins with providing definitions for the terminology that is used in the book such as what a ghost is, the meanings of myths and legends.As someone with an interest in this subject, I could follow it fine but I don't know how a new to subject reader would fare. I didn’t expect the book to go into such detail about things that I, personally, might not have even associated with ghosts (such as magicians). kind of reminded me of a grown up horrible histories style of book, the illustration style is fairly similar! one other thing i really loved was the further reading and further watching sections at the end, a cool little inclusion. This was my first time encountering Boardman's work but based on the premise and being published by Nobrow, I was expecting something aimed at older readers and either principally visual or prose/sequential art in tandem.

If you already know your stuff then you might not get too much out of this, but it still makes a nice book to have on the shelf and loan to guests. The artwork is by far and away the biggest asset to this book, it straddled the line between infographic and illustrative style in just the right way, and every page was full of fun characters and objects to make this a really visually engaging read.It's the first time I've seen explanations from different cultures and belief systems in such depth, usually you only hear of the traditional western (often religious) and maybe some Japanese myths and traditions, both make up the majority of horror media we see today. Sometimes the formatting was hard to follow, some pages the information went across and others it went down the page.