In a New York travel guide book, they're all going to list the Empire State Building and Nobu, but here's a book that tells you to visit the Empire not for the views, but the gift shop full of "King Kong" merchandise. Instead of the trendy restaurants, Ocker lists alien or monster themed restaurants. His interest in The Dakotas are not only because of John Lennon, but as the filming location for Rosemary's Baby. It's an irreverent road trip across the state, searching for some famous and never-heard-of sites. Visiting a "Grave of a Boy Killed by Kisses", he says:

The first thing we want to know when we hear that someone has died is the how. Yet when we enter any given graveyard, we rarely get answers to that question. It's just not information traditionally considered epitaph-worthy. I've always kind of wanted it to be there, though. I mean, we'd get mostly "heart attack" and "cancer" inscribed in the stones of our cemeteries, but that would be worth it for the one "strangled by tight rope wire after accidentally skydiving over a circus."

Visiting every grim site in the state that he could find, Ocker has a humorous, at times skeptical, view of movie locations, amusement park "dark" rides and little towns banking on monster-sighting tourism. He visits the infamous Amityville Horror house, an anatomy museum, crumbling insane asylums, memorials and many graveyards. All of this sounds like it would be a bit relentless, but Ocker is such a funny companion, full of backstories, history and opinions. I'll definitely be checking out his other books. ( )