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Gary Lachman reviews

'A HISTORY OF TERROR' by Paul Newman

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Since human beings became aware of their own existence, people have been afraid. But have they always been afraid of the same things? Wild animals, spirits, demons and psychopaths: down the ages, the objects of our anxieties have changed and shifted. In this elegantly written, engagingly conversational and superbly informative book, Paul Newman charts the shapes and sizes our fear has taken, from the rustic ‘panic’ of ancient herdsmen suddenly confronted with the Great God of the wild, to postmodern websurfers, overwhelmed by the glut of useless facts on the ‘information superhighway’. Fear, Newman argues, is born of our confrontation with the void’; either the blank page of the existentially absurd, or the prolix electronic cascades of the internet. It is a manifestation of Pan: “the unknowable abyss that during the course of history yields many secrets and consolations, yet withholds its raison d’etre or ulimate significance.”

Newman’s evocative survey is written with humour and frequently arresting, and while it amasses an impressive amount of material, never proves too big a mouthful. Poetic flights on the ravages of the Black Death or the Great Fire of London are matched with pithy intellectual journalism and fascinating case histories, like the story of John Wilmot, rake, ne’er-do-well and author of a fascinating poem on “Nothing”. Black masses, Satanists, homicidal maniacs and tyrants: this book has them all – 

Gary Lachman 

(Fortean Times: November 2000)

FORTEAN VERDICT: Never has sheer terror seemed so attractive.