I may or may not have read at least part of this book before. When I found it at a used book sale somewhere, it looked familiar. Having read it, I’m not sure if it was the same one as before. There are certain parts that I would’ve thought a high schooler would have remembered. I recognize the names of the authors, Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu. You see, one of my senior term papers in high school was on vampires. Unable to afford books, my research was done in the school library and this book is old enough to have been in the collection. While the subtitle, A True History of Dracula and Vampire Legends, may seem to indicate a book primarily about vampires, In Search of Dracula is mainly about Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler. I can’t imagine myself wading through all the Romanian history in high school.
You see, I remember reading a book on the history of vampires. The strongest memory is of reading it in our church sanctuary. Lest you get the wrong idea, I was very involved in our youth group. We occasionally had chaperoned sleepovers at the church and I had already had a leadership role, serving on church committees and district and conference-level events. Nobody had a problem with me sitting in the sanctuary. On one of the sleepovers, I awoke early (as I have always tended to do), and I went to the sanctuary to read the book by the dawn’s early light streaming through the stained-glass window. I have kept a look out for the book, and I thought this might have been it.
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. While this history does have a good summary of vampire customs and even movies, it takes a stout stomach to read the material about Vlad III’s reign. Although he is a Romanian hero, he was a cruel man and his infamy was well established during his own lifetime. I’m pretty sure that he would’ve been diagnosed with a mental disorder, had psychology existed then. This book does trace his history and surveys various places associated with him. One thing that might’ve been helpful would have been more maps. The authors are clearly well versed in Transylvanian geography, but the average reader may not be able to find some of the many place names on the one map they include. Otherwise, this is quite an informative book, mostly about Vlad, but with useful chapters on Bram Stoker and the vampire in the media up to the early seventies.
