Motivational Vampire, The

A UNIQUE BLEND OF CHEEKY HUMOR, QUIRKY HISTORY, AND SELF-IMPROVEMENT DISGUISED AS VAMPIRE LORE. How did corpses become sexy? Why do vampires hate garlic? Did you know that everything you’ve heard about vampires came from government paperwork? Or why the earliest vampires hungered not for blood, but beef stew? Learning about vampires reveals what really shapes our world—manipulation. The Motivational Vampire shows us how to spot it from others and fix it in ourselves. How the Great Vampire Epidemic humbled the Vatican and transformed the Holy Roman Empire teaches us how to identify an agenda. How early science “verified” the existence of vampires teaches us about confirmation bias. How the evolution of vampires—from page to stage, Bela Lugosi to Brad Pitt, Dragula to Twilight—reveals the forcing functions changing our world. How Bram Stoker ditched his entire plan for Dracula to escape the sunk cost fallacy. Find drama in how the first vampire novel was written by the world’s greatest lover in a year without a summer—then stolen by his doctor, then stolen by his publisher. Learn how fear functions and how vampire movies can make us better able to overcome it—not emotionally, but physically! And really, who doesn’t want to meet the headless vampires of Asia, or the blood-sucking-toes vampire of Australia? Find laughs in my offbeat travels through Transylvania. I wanted to meet a vampire, so my guide told me, “Go where the people still believe.” I found out the hard way why she didn’t add, “Because they have reason to.” Didn’t stop me from living in Transylvania for years, though, mere blocks from Dracula’s birthplace. Just sayin’.