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How Night of the Living Dead Saved My Life and Changed the World
by Daniel Kraus
Book Reviewed by:The New York Times bestselling author of Whalefall and Angel Down dives into a horror movie classic to examine his favorite film's importance to our history, culture, and psychology--a perfect blend of research and memoir for fans of the movie, the genre, and beyond.
Daniel Kraus first saw George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead when he was five years old. Through watching it approximately three hundred times since, Kraus discovered the many ways the film is tied to his childhood trauma and how its influence has carried into his adulthood. He couldn't help but wonder: Are there other admirers of the film out there who feel the same?
Partially Devoured uses a frame-by-frame deep dive into Night of the Living Dead to produce a kaleidoscopic cultural investigation of the film's importance and to examine the author's early life of rural isolation and local violence.
Careening from film analysis to rabbit-hole tangents, Partially Devoured will take readers from screaming laughter to the depths of grief, all while illustrating how a beloved genre film has woven itself into so many facets of our lives.
2026 first quarter besties
...ex.cfm/book_number/5086/heart-the-lover Heart the Lover by Lily King https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/5178/partially-devoured Partially Devoured by Daniel Kraus (I suspect https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/4840/the-flower-sisters The Flower Sisters by Michelle Collins Anderson will make...
-kim.kovacs
BookBrowsers Ask Daniel Kraus, author of Angel Down and Whalefall
I know you've got Partially Devoured on deck for March, and of course Whalefall comes out in theaters in October. What else is on tap for you? Can you tell us anything about the projects you're currently working on?
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (1/22/2026)
In the past week I finished https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/19458/harlem-rhapsody Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray for our upcoming book club read next week. I thought it was very well done and I'm looking forward to discussing it with the ...
-kim.kovacs
You don't have to be a horror fan or even to have seen Night of the Living Dead to enjoy Partially Devoured. Although it may seem like a niche book, its appeal is strikingly broad, and I find it hard to imagine a reader who wouldn't find Kraus's style entertaining. It's a fun look at an influential movie and those who made it, set against a formative period in American history. I highly recommend it to all audiences...continued
Full Review
(799 words)
(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
Colson Whitehead
Here it is—the ultimate autopsy of one of pop culture's master texts, capturing Night scene by scene, and everything outside of frame as well. Kraus is a sly, sympathetic, and funny tour guide, and he's concocted a lovely tribute to the grubby adventure of low-budget filmmaking and the delicate miracle that is the artistic process. Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts
This meticulous, obsessive, and moving book is not only for fans of Night of the Living Dead; it's a stirring celebration of the beautiful and essential imperfectness of art and its creators.
Novelist Daniel Kraus's first nonfiction book, Partially Devoured, is a paean to the movie Night of the Living Dead (1968), a film that has been meaningful to him since his childhood and which helped inspire his writing career. He credits the movie's writer-director, George A. Romero, with creating the being most think of when we hear the term "zombie"—a lurching, mindless, reanimated corpse that hunts the living, intent on eating their brains. But while it's true that Romero spawned the modern zombie film genre, stories of similar creatures appear in folktales across the globe.
The first known reference in literature to zombie-like beings was recorded in The Epic of Gilgamesh, where Ishtar threatens to "...
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