Humans - by Surekha Davies (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"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.

From the Back Cover

"Surekha Davies turns the tables and looks at humankind through the burning eyes of the monsters it has created in its seemingly limitless effort to isolate otherness. A triumph of scholarship that is as erudite as it is entertaining."--Lindsey Fitzharris, New York Times-bestselling author of The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I

"To consider the monster is to consider what it means to be human, because it forces us to examine how we have prescribed those limits, whether in terms of race, sexuality, appearance, or capacities. So Davies's book could not be more timely or urgent. That it is constantly insightful, erudite, and entertaining makes it irresistible; I can imagine no more congenial way of arguing that, in the end, the monsters are us."--Philip Ball, author of The Book of Minds: How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings, from Animals to AI to Aliens

"In a fascinating upending of the usual analysis of monsters, Davies focuses on the humans who perpetrate 'monstrification, ' from scientists and sports doctors to pop stars and spiritual leaders. The monster here emerges less as a figure for identity than a metaphor for a cultural process, constantly under revision, that allows one group of humans to disavow the humanity of another. Thoughtful, wide-ranging, and fun."--Annalee Newitz, bestselling author of The Terraformers and Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age

"A marvel of fast-paced storytelling and rigorous historical analysis. Davies takes readers on a journey across space and time, carefully reconstructing centuries-old processes of monster-making with wit and aplomb. In the process, we learn that monster-makers have policed the boundaries of humanity out of ignorance, fear, and hate, producing forms of legal and social exclusion that we all live with today. But there is also a sense of hope suffused throughout the pages of this book: hope that with knowledge, bravery, and love, we can recognize the humanity in all of us and chart more inclusive, less frightful futures."--Tamara J. Walker, author of Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad

Review Quotes

"Davies provides concrete historical examples to help us understand our enduring fascination with monsters."

-- "Christian Century"

"Creative and deeply serious, winding a path from primordial gods to zombies and large language models. Davies shows how the concept of monstrousness helped create the categories of who is human and who is not that undergird contemporary inequality. It is a history of why we make monsters - and what might happen if we cease to."

-- "History Today Books of the Year 2025"

"Wide-ranging, eclectic and creative, it's more about how we create monsters - and who we create them from - than it is about monsters them­selves. Davies visits the freak show, but it's the audience and the proprietors she's interested in looking at."

-- "Fortean Times"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"Wide-ranging, weirdly fascinating."-- "The Ink"

About the Author

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.