Jason Zinoman

Based on unprecedented access to the genre's major players, "New York Times" film critic Zinoman delivers the first definitive account of horror's golden age--the 1970s, when such directors as Wes Craven, Roman Polanski, John Carpenter, and Brian De Palma redefined the genre.

In 1968 a young college drop-out named George A. Romero directed Night of the living dead, a low budget horror film that shocked the world, became an icon of the counterculture, and spawned a zombie industry worth billions of dollars that continues to this day. Birth of the living dead shows how Romero gathered an unlikely team of Pittsburghers - policemen, iron workers, teachers, ad-men, housewives and a roller-rink owner - to shoot a revolutionary...