Monsters. Real or imagined, literal or metaphorical, they have exerted a dread fascination on the human mind for many centuries. They attract and repel us, intrigue and terrify us, and in the process reveal something deeply important about the darker recesses of our collective psyche.
Stephen Asma's On Monsters is a wide-ranging cultural and conceptual history of monsters--how they have evolved over time, what functions they have served for us, and what shapes they are likely to take in the future. Asma begins with a letter from Alexander the Great in 326 B.C. detailing an encounter in India with an "enormous beast--larger than an elephantthree ominous horns on its forehead." From there the monsters come fast and furious--Behemoth and Leviathan, Gog and Magog, the leopard-bear-lion beast of Revelation, Satan and his demons, Grendel and Frankenstein, circus freaks and headless children, right up to the serial killers and terrorists of today and the post-human cyborgs of tomorrow. Monsters embody our deepest anxieties and vulnerabilities, Asma argues, but they also symbolize the mysterious and incoherent territory just beyond the safe enclosures of rational thought. Exploring philosophical treatises, theological tracts, newspapers, pamphlets, films, scientific notebooks, and novels, Asma unpacks traditional monster stories for the clues they offer about the inner logic of an era's fears and fascinations. In doing so, he illuminates the many ways monsters have become repositories for those human qualities that must be repudiated, externalized, and defeated.
Asma suggests that how we handle monsters reflects how we handle uncertainty, ambiguity, insecurity. And in a world that is daily becoming less secure and more ambiguous, he shows how we might learn to better live with monsters--and thereby avoid becoming one.
Industry Reviews
"Monsters literal and metaphorical are dissected with skill and discernment in philosopher and scholar Asma's penetrating "unnatural history." Erudite, funny, and deeply attuned to the profound psychological and moral implications of monstrousness, Asma encompasses the mystical and the scientific as he ponders the simultaneous repulsion and attraction monsters arouse... Asma is insightful and entertaining in his discussion of monsters of the deep, supernatural
doppelgangers, zombies, and vampires, and intense in his discussion of Freud and the 'science of monstrous feelings...' Asma's far-reaching book of monsterology is original, captivating, and profoundly
elucidating."--Booklist starred review
"With insight, erudition, and humor, Asma's compendium of monsterology traces the evolving meanings and manifestations of monsters since antiquity, in religion, philosophy, science, literature, popular culture, and the human psyche. To explain the eternal attraction and repulsion of the monstrous, Asma draws on material from Aristotle to nanotechnology, revealing myriad, surprising ways that supernatural, natural, and metaphorical monsters inhabit the landscape
of our imagination."--Adrienne Mayor, author of The First Fossil Hunters and The Poison King
"On Monsters is a humorously omnivorous consideration of the monstrous. It's a delightful book, a terrific balance of scholarship and wonder."--Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife
"A wide-ranging exploration of fear and evil, Asma's presentation and theories are original and practical, depicting those dark, repulsive notions of an unstable, turbulent world in which everybody must struggle to remain human and civilized." --Publishers Weekly
"A comprehensive modern-day bestiary."--New Yorker
"Cleverly conceived and slyly written...I have seldom read a book that so satisfyingly achieves such an ambitious goal... His new book is a feast." --Washington Post
"Spelunking adventure through the caverns of world history, culture and thought." --Chicago Sun-Times
"Asma has a lucid, engaging style, and he uses it to provide a thoughtfully breezy survey of the bizarre and the lurking." --Chicago Reader
In his new book, On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, Columbia College lecturer Stephen Asma lays out a frightful and compelling bestiary." --Time Out Chicago
"This highly readable, often humorous book is suitable for anyone interested in the history of ideas, culture, and the imagination." --Choice
"Asma's book is a thoroughly entertaining and informative discussion of human fear and monsters. It consistently takes the reader in unexpected directions and makes complex connections that are not readily apparent. The mixture of history, religion, psychology, and philosophy, infused with periodic doses of popular culture references, makes this book much more than simply a bestiary of monsters."--Journal of Folklore Research
"A thoroughly entertaining and informative discussion of human fear and monsters. It consistently takes the reader in unexpected directions and makes complex connections that are not readily apparent. The mixture of history, religion, psychology, and philosophy, infused with periodic doses of popular culture references, makes this book much more than simply a bestiary of monsters." --Journal of Folklore Research
