Humans

Reviews / Votes

"Wide-ranging, weirdly fascinating." * The Ink * "Davies invites readers to imagine the lives of historical monsters and to empathize with their often-wretched treatment." * Science Magazine * "Davies's book is a radical and timely plea to renew our focus on the humanities. At a time when biology and other sciences are making great strides in understanding how we are put together, chemically and physically, Humans makes clear how vital it is that we invest in understanding how we are put together culturally." * The Chronicle of Higher Education * "Humans documents the curious ways we have thought about who counts as human throughout history, from Pliny's belief that extreme environments created monstrous people to the 18th-century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus's four subtypes of humans. Most significant for our time, however, are Davies' thoughts on nation states - the way ideas about race and birthrights are used for dark political ends - and on how AI might end up monstering us." * The New Statesman * "Engaging . . . As the historian of science, art and ideas concludes: 'Monsters are portals. Monsters are us. Let's get to work.'" * Nature * "Surekha Davies' Humans traces the long, volatile history of monster-making to chart a better path for the future. Along the way, Davies reveals how people have defined the human in relation to everything from apes to zombies, and how they invented race, gender, and nations." * Arab News * "The monsters at the heart of this stimulating new book do not hide under beds or coil around the edges of maps. They do not harass passers-by with riddles. As the mirror on the cover suggests, Surekha Davies's monsters are us - in her view, perhaps the best of us." * The TLS * "Embracing the label of monster can afford us all some respite from the pressures of fitting neatly into the categories that have been assigned to us. . . . embracing the monster can remind us that there is no one way to be human." * The Oxonian Review * "Wide-ranging, eclectic and creative, it's more about how we create monsters - and who we create them from - than it is about monsters them-selves. Davies visits the freak show, but it's the audience and the proprietors she's interested in looking at." * Fortean Times *