Read By: Steven Carpenter

Hailed as "a feast" (Washington Post) and "a modern-day bestiary" (The New
Yorker), 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.
Beginning at the time of Alexander the Great, the monsters come fast and
furious - Behemoth and Leviathan, Gog and Magog, 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 beyond the safe
enclosures of rational thought. Exploring sources as diverse as philosophical
treatises, scientific notebooks, and novels, Asma unravels 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.

Download File Size:563.95 MB

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