One of the very first books to take Stephen King seriously Landscape of Fear originally published in 1988 reveals the source of Kings horror in the sociopolitical anxieties of the postVietnam postWatergate era. In this groundbreaking study Tony Magistrale shows how Kings fiction transcends the escapism typical of its genre to tap into our deepest cultural fears that the government we have installed through the democratic process is not only corrupt but actively pursuing our destruction that our technologies have progressed to the point at which the individual has now become expendable and that our fundamental social institutions school marriage workplace and the church have beneath their veneers of respectability evolved into perverse manifestations of narcissism greed and violence. show more