HALLOWEEN: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night

The list

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   HALLOWEEN: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night 2003

   Scholarly history tracing Halloween from Celtic Samhain ritual to modern commercial holiday, by Nicholas Rogers.

Facts from the original

• The book is written by Nicholas Rogers and published by Oxford University Press in a 1st edition on October 31, 2003.
• It runs 198 pages and its ISBN-13 is 978-0195168969.
• The book traces Halloween from the Celtic festival of Samhain (summer's end) and elements of the Christian Hallowtide (All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day).
• It describes Halloween arriving in North America as an Irish and Scottish festival and becoming an unofficial but large-scale holiday by the early 20th century.
• It examines the 1970s and '80s phenomena of Halloween sadism (razor blades in apples) and inner-city violence such as arson in Detroit.
• It discusses the influence of the horror film genre on reinventing Halloween as a terror-fest.
• Rogers argues Halloween is at its core a night of inversion, when social norms are turned upside down and temporary freedom of expression reigns.
• The book examines how this license prompted censure by the religious Right, occasional outrage from law enforcement, and appropriation by Left-leaning political groups.
• The book has a 4.0 out of 5 star rating from 37 global ratings.
• Its rating breakdown is 56% 5-star, 17% 4-star, 14% 3-star, 5% 2-star, and 8% 1-star.
• It holds a best sellers rank of #2,335,678 in Books, #136 in Holidays, #38,929 in United States History, and #53,792 in World History.
• Nicholas Rogers is Professor of History at York University.
• He co-authored Eighteenth-Century English Society: Shuttles and Swords (OUP) and authored Crowds, Culture, and Politics in Georgian Britain (OUP), which won the 1999 Wallace K. Ferguson Prize of the Canadian Historical Association.
• Publishers Weekly called it "the best work so far on this increasingly important holiday."
• The New York Times Book Review praised Rogers as a connoisseur of macabre tidbits who takes store merchandise seriously.
• The Montreal Gazette said the survey tells you everything you need to know, and possibly more.
• The list price is $38.99; Kindle is $16.19, Hardcover $20.81, and Paperback $19.89, with used copies from $2.15.
• Customers describe it as informative and well-researched, a great source of information on the history of Halloween.
• One reviewer noted it even discusses the HALLOWEEN film series, though they spotted a mistake in that section.
• A reviewer recommended companion books: The Pagan Mysteries of Halloween by Markale and Halloween: An American Holiday, An American Tradition by Bannatyne.
• The book is compared to Hutton's Stations of the Sun, which Rogers cites throughout; reviewers call Rogers's book more accessible and less dry.