Zombie stories are peculiarly American, as the creature was born in The New World and functions as a reminder of the atrocities of colonialism and slavery. This book provides an analysis of the cinematic zombie tradition, starting with its origins in Haitian folklore and tracking the development of the subgenre into the 21st century.

Since the early 2000s, popular culture has experienced a "Zombie Renaissance," beginning in film and expanding into books, television, video games, theatre productions, phone apps, collectibles and toys. Zombies have become allegorical figures embodying cultural anxieties, but they also serve as models for concepts in economics, political theory, neuroscience, psychology, computer science and astronomy. They are powerful, multifarious metaphors representing fears of contagion and doom but also isolation and abandonment, as well as troubling aspects of human cruelty, public spectacle and...