A01=Surekha Davies
animals
Anthony Kwame Appiah
Author_Surekha Davies
bodies
CASTE
Category=JP
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
Category=NHTQ
civilization
climate
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
European colonialism
faith
Folklore
gender
haute couture
History of monstrous beings
Human nature
Human storytelling
Industrial Age
Isabel Wilkerson
medieval unicorn horns
modern world
mythical side
narrative
race
robot ethics
Star Trek
THE LIES THAT BIND
The Muppet Show
Understanding humanity
vampires
werewolves
witches
zombies
Product details
- ISBN 9780520430792
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 17 Mar 2026
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
"Surekha Davies invites readers to imagine the lives of historical monsters and to empathize with their often-wretched treatment." ― Science Magazine
A history of how humans have created monsters out of one another—from our deepest fears—and what these monsters tell us about humanity's present and future.
Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science Dr. Surekha Davies as she reveals how people have defined the human in relation to everything from apes to zombies, and how they invented race, gender, and nations along the way. With rich, evocative storytelling that braids together ancient gods and generative AI, Frankenstein's monster and E.T., Humans: A Monstrous History shows how monster-making is about control: it defines who gets to count as normal.
In an age when corporations increasingly see people as obstacles to profits, this book traces the long, volatile history of monster-making and charts a better path for the future. The result is a profound, effervescent, empowering retelling of the history of the world for anyone who wants to reverse rising inequality and polarization. This is not a history of monsters, but a history through monsters.
A history of how humans have created monsters out of one another—from our deepest fears—and what these monsters tell us about humanity's present and future.
Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science Dr. Surekha Davies as she reveals how people have defined the human in relation to everything from apes to zombies, and how they invented race, gender, and nations along the way. With rich, evocative storytelling that braids together ancient gods and generative AI, Frankenstein's monster and E.T., Humans: A Monstrous History shows how monster-making is about control: it defines who gets to count as normal.
In an age when corporations increasingly see people as obstacles to profits, this book traces the long, volatile history of monster-making and charts a better path for the future. The result is a profound, effervescent, empowering retelling of the history of the world for anyone who wants to reverse rising inequality and polarization. This is not a history of monsters, but a history through monsters.
Dr. Surekha Davies is a British author, speaker, and historian of science, art, and ideas. Her first book, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human, won the Morris D. Forkosch Prize for the best first book in intellectual history from the Journal of the History of Ideas and the Roland H. Bainton Prize in History and Theology. She has written essays and reviews about the histories of biology, anthropology, and monsters in the Times Literary Supplement, Nature, Science, and Aeon.
