For this installment of our weekly book reviews from Booklist, the American Library Association’s (ALA) nationally distributed book and media review publication, we’re kicking off the Halloween season with Becky Spratford’s review of “Partially Devoured: How Night of the Living Dead Saved My Life and Changed the World” by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former ALA staffer Daniel Kraus, first published February 1, 2026, in Booklist.
Enjoy.
“Partially Devoured: How Night of the Living Dead Saved My Life and Changed the World”
By Daniel Kraus
March 2026. 320p. Counterpoint.
New York Times best-selling author Kraus (“Angel Down,” 2025) loves the 1968 film “Night of the Living Dead,” but he has never written about it with such heartbreakingly beautiful emotion. He begins by talking directly to the readers, helping them sync up their versions of the film to match the time stamps scattered throughout the book. Kraus continues in this conversational style, watching the film with his audience and pausing to share 360 degrees of detail. To say that Kraus takes readers down a rabbit hole is an understatement, one that trivializes the depths to which he probes the movie, the life stories of those involved in its creation, its worldly significance, and most importantly, how he would not be the writer, or even human, he is without it. More than the intimate memoir or film study the title proclaims, this is storytelling at its finest. For all readers, whether they have heard of Romero or not, this is a book about America and about death, oozing with grief on every page, while simultaneously bursting with life. An easy suggestion for fans of Cassandra Peterson’s “Yours Cruelly, Elvira” (2021), but it is more similar to Joan Didion’s unforgettable classic, “The Year of Magical Thinking” (2005).— Becky Spratford
If you enjoyed this review and would like to learn more about “Partially Devoured,” listen to a conversation with Kraus about the book on our “How I Library” podcast below or wherever you enjoy podcasts.
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