There’s a scene in the action/horror film Blade: Trinity in which a resurrected Dracula, played with a considerable lack of energy by Prison Break’s Dominic Purcell, wanders into a store that sells vampire-themed novelty items. For a second — just before Dracula kills everyone around and the movie switches back to another techno-saturated fight scene — it’s amusing. Where did vampire lore begin and how did it result in countless terrible movies, action figures and a breakfast cereal?

In his latest book, The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula, Eric Nuzum, a D.C.-based pop culture critic, heads off to Romania, London and Oregon (yes, Oregon) in search of the answer to that question. Along the way, he drinks his own blood, watches every episode of Buffy, hangs out at a Ruby Tuesday’s in Fairfax with a “vampire,” and attends a showing of the only all-vampire strip show in Vegas. If you think that sounds particularly amusing, you’ll love The Dead Travel Fast.

Nuzum makes no assumptions about his readers. If you’ve never read Bram Stoker’s Dracula (we haven’t) and your only knowledge of the book was brought to you by Francis Ford Coppola, don’t worry. Nuzum’s book reads like Vampires 101. You’ll learn all about the real Vlad Dracula, the Wallachian and Transylvanian prince who liked to impale people for just about every reason imaginable. You’ll also learn that Stoker conducted little to no research on the real Dracula and essentially used his name because it sounded cool.