Cinema's Doppelgängers is a counterfactual history of the cinema - or, perhaps, a work of speculative fiction in the guise of a scholarly history of film and movie guide. That is, it's a history of the movies written from an alternative unfolding of historical time - a world in which neither the Bolsheviks nor the Nazis came to power, and thus a world in which Sergei Eisenstein never made movies and German filmmakers like Fritz Lang never fled to Hollywood, a world in which the talkies were invented in 1936 rather than 1927, in which the French New Wave critics didn't become filmmakers, and in which Hitchcock never came to Hollywood. The book attempts, on the one hand, to explore and expand upon the intrinsically creative nature of all historical writing; like all works of fiction, its ultimate goal is to be a work of art in and of itself. But it also aims, on the other hand, to be a legitimate examination of the relationship between the economic and political organization of nations and film industries and the resulting aesthetics of film and thus of the dominant ideas and values of film scholarship and criticism. Doug Dibbern's first book, Hollywood Riots: Violent Crowds and Progressive Politics in American Film, won the 2016 Peter Rollins Prize. He has published scholarly essays on classical Hollywood filmmakers, film criticism for The Notebook at Mubi.com, and literary essays for journals like Chicago Quarterly Review and Hotel Amerika. He has a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University, where he teaches now in the Expository Writing Program.

Zerofriends co-founder Alex Pardee returns with a collection of some of the most horrifying and iconic characters of film, video games and comics with Doppelgangers. The monograph displays a parade of serial killers, demons, aliens and psychopaths, from early Universal monsters in melancholy black and white to modern horrors captured in full bloody color. The freaks of cult classics rub shoulders with the slick killers of modern blockbusters, all captured with Pardees signature deranged style and a sense of childlike delight. Nostalgia and terror mix with the blood, guts and slime that drip from the collections pages, but above all, Pardees tongue-in-cheek humor shines through, with characters like Space Balls Dark Helmet jostling for space alongside the Thing, Hannibal Lector and Godzilla. In Doppelgangers, Pardee invites us to get cozy with the evil twins and dark doubles of pop culture.

Sister Mary Jacalyn was a nun in German Village, Columbus, Ohio, in the 1800s. She was tried and convicted in the disappearance and deaths of over one hundred young girls. Now, in 2007, she has returned with vengeance in mind, and the towns of Columbus and Port Clinton will never be the same as the nun uses her otherworldly abilities to wreak havoc. Sister Mary has the power to alter and recreate a person’s reality as well as control people’s feelings. All over Columbus, residents are feeling her wrath. David, Deanne, and their friends have now returned but are in for a very personal touch. According to the nun, someone opened the portal that connects this world to hers, and they must fix it. Unless the portal is closed, she threatens to force David and his friends into realities of her own making, over and over. If the portal remains open, the group of friends will become lost to another world and another reality. Sister Mary has offered them a chance to end the madness; they must find a way to close the portal or be forever lost wandering the in-between.

Eight outre tales of the doubly weird by J. Sheridan LeFanu, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Algernon Blackwood, Guy de Maupassant, Honore de Balzac, Hans Christian Andersen, Henry James, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. . . . The face in the mirror is yours, but ever so slightly different. A shadow haunts your house, but it walks in places you've never gone. You grew up with a boy who had your face and your name, except he always did everything right, while you never could. Evil twins, double images: these are the tales of the Doppelganger.

#1 NATIONAL BESTELLER • Shortlisted for the 2024 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction • Finalist for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism • Shortlisted for the 2024 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize • A New York Times Notable Book of 2023 • Vulture’s #1 Book of 2023 •A Guardian Best Ideas Book of 2023 What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you'd devoted your life to fighting against? “If I had to name a single book that makes sense of these last few dark years, it would be this one.” ―Katie Roiphe, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) Not long ago, Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were similar enough to her own that many people confused her for the other. For a vertiginous moment, she lost her bearings. And then she got interested, in a reality that seems to be warping and doubling like a digital hall of mirrors. It’s happening in our politics as New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers find common cause with fire-breathing far right propagandists (all in the name of protecting “the children”). It’s happening in our culture as AI gobbles up music, paintings, fiction and everything in between and spits out imitations that threaten to overtake the originals. And it’s happening to many of us as individuals as we create digital doubles of ourselves, filtered and curated just so for all the other duplicates to see. An award-winning journalist, bestselling author, public intellectual and activist, Naomi Klein writes books that orient us in our time. She has offered essential accounts of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Now, as liberal democracies teeter on the edge, Klein takes aim at absurdist authoritarianism, using a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the doubles that haunt us. Part tragicomic memoir, part chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Doppelganger invites readers on a wild ride, smashing through the mirror world, charting a path beyond despair towards true solidarity.

Get the Summary of Naomi Klein's Doppelganger in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. "Doppelganger" by Naomi Klein is a deep dive into the author's unsettling experience of being mistaken for her ideological opposite, Naomi Wolf. Klein's journey is sparked by her own mistaken identity during Occupy Wall Street and leads her to investigate the rise of anti-democratic forces and the cultural dynamics of doubling, where online avatars and personal brands create fragmented identities. The book examines the psychological and societal implications of having a doppelganger, the polarization of identities, and the historical doubling of race, ethnicity, and gender. Klein contrasts her consistent focus on corporate exploitation and environmentalism with Wolf's shift towards authoritarianism and conspiracy theories, highlighting the confusion and frustration caused by their digital identity mix-up.

For centuries, the witches of Starfall have served the people of the fourteen domains while keeping their own secrets close. No one outside their ranks knows their power comes from a ritual that divides each newborn daughter in two: the witch, infused with magic, and the doppelganger, a soulless shell that is soon destroyed. Not all of the doppelgangers are dead, though, and their battle to survive will plunge Starfall into crisis. So long as her doppelganger lives, a witch cannot control her magic. But there are secrets even the witches do not know, and the doppelgangers hold power of their own . . . This omnibus includes the novels from the novel duology Warrior and Witch, as well as the prequel novella “Dancing the Warrior.”

The notion of a person--or even an object--having a "double" has been explored in the visual arts for ages, and in myriad ways: portraying the body and its soul, a woman gazing at her reflection in a pool, or a man overwhelmed by his own shadow. In this edited collection focusing on nineteenth- and twentieth-century western art, scholars analyze doppelgangers, alter egos, mirror images, double portraits and other pairings, human and otherwise, appearing in a large variety of artistic media. Artists whose works are discussed at length include Richard Dadd, Salvador Dali, Egon Schiele, Frida Kahlo, the creators of Superman, and Nicola Costantino, among many others.

Detective Jake Daggers hates three things—mornings, walking, and naked guys. So when he and his sexy half-elf partner, Shay Steele, get called to a murder scene featuring a bare-bottomed doughy dude with an icy dagger sticking out of his chest, he’s not amused. Even less happy? The Captain, when the lone murder turns into a frosty-bladed epidemic. In a case featuring frost mages, enchanted weaponry, and a jaded mystery writer, Daggers and Steele must race against the clock to discover who’s delivering deadly doses of COLD HARD STEELE.

Homicide detective Jake Daggers wishes his life contained as much mystery and excitement as his cases—and with the smart and sultry half-elf Shay Steele becoming his new partner, it’s about to. Join Detectives Daggers and Steele as they embark on an epic ten book quest to bring the criminals of the dark and fantastical city of New Welwic to justice. Along the way, they’ll cross paths with fire mages, frost mages, werebeasts, zombies, vampires, ghosts, and more, but as much as the action simmers, it’s Daggers and Steele’s relationship that ultimately reaches a boil. This box set includes the complete Daggers & Steele series, including: Red Hot Steele Cold Hard Steele Time To Steele Fine Blue Steele Crucible Steele Steele-Faced Steele of the Night Steele Life Liquid Steele Man of Steele and the Dagger to the Heart prequel novella, previously not available in stores. Check out the series that over a quarter of a million people have already tried. Buy Daggers and Steele: The Complete series and save up to 75% off the list price!