On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears [Hardcover]

Stephen T. Asma (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2009

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Real or imagined, literal or metaphorical, monsters have exerted a dread fascination on the human mind for many centuries. Using philosophical treatises, theological tracts, newspapers, films, and novels, author Stephen T. Asma unpacks traditional monster stories for the clues they offer about the inner logic of our fears and fascinations throughout the ages.

Take a Closer Look at the Mythical Creatures from On Monsters
Click on image to enlarge

The manticore monster was thought to favor human flesh. Descriptions of the beast appear in the natural history texts of Ctesias, Aristotle, and Pliny. Pencil drawing by Stephen T. Asma © 2008, based on a sketch from Edward Topsell’s seventeenth-century bestiary.

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The Golem is a bumbling monster of Jewish folklore. The clay creature was animated by Rabbi Judah Loew to protect the Jewish ghetto but could not be controlled and wreaked havoc in Prague. Pen and ink drawing by Stephen T. Asma © 2008.

The Cyclops legend was fueled by ancient Greek misinterpretations of mastodon skulls found in Mediterranean caves. Pencil drawing and collage by Stephen T. Asma.

Symbolic of God’s power, the biblical Behemoth appears in the Book of Psalms and Job. Pencil drawing by Stephen T. Asma © 2008.

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From Publishers Weekly

Asma's book zooms in on the subject of monsters, both mythical and real, past, present and future, detailing how they have fascinated and frightened the human imagination through all of recorded time. Conjuring dread, the mind's eye has embraced the Philistine giant Goliath, Grendel, the golem of Jewish lore, Frankenstein's monster, freak shows, monster spectacles and werewolves with equal parts affection and terror, writes Asma, a philosophy professor at Columbia College Chicago. Using varied media sources, from history to legend and literature, Asma studies the symbolic meaning of monsters (e.g., biblical monsters represent arrogance in the face of God's power) and their psychological function. He concludes that humans need an excuse to fight, protect and defend, as well as to transfer those horrific qualities, our own monstrous desires, to inhuman beings. 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. 30 b&w illus. (Oct.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; First Edition edition (October 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 019533616X
• ISBN-13: 978-0195336160
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.1 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #109,748 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen T. Asma is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago, where he holds the title of Distinguished Scholar.

Asma is the author of seven books, including "Against Fairness" (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2012), "On Monsters: an Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears" (Oxford Univ. Press), "Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads" (Oxford Univ. Press), "The Gods Drink Whiskey" (HarperOne), and the best selling "Buddha for Beginners" (originally published in 1996 and reissued in 2008). His writing has been translated into German, Spanish, Hebrew, Czech, Romanian, Hindi, Portuguese, and Chinese.

Asma has written for the New York Times, the Sunday Times, the Daily Beast, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Chicago Tribune, the Huffington Post, Psychology Today, the Fortnightly Review, and Skeptic magazine.

Dr. Asma is a founding Fellow of the "Research Group in Mind, Science and Culture" at Columbia College Chicago. The Research Group is actively working on a philosophical and scientific understanding of the mind/brain that properly incorporates the emotional dimensions of mammalian consciousness.

In addition to Western philosophy, Asma has an abiding interest in Buddhism and Confucianism. In 2003, he was Visiting Professor at the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia, teaching a "Buddhist Philosophy" seminar course as part of their Graduate Program in Buddhist Studies. In addition to Cambodia, he has also researched Asian philosophies in Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Laos. He has also lived and studied in Shanghai China.

Asma has lectured at Harvard, Brown University, the Field Museum, the Newberry Library, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and many more.

His website is: www.stephenasma.com

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Monsters Within November 22, 2009

By Adam Rourke

Format:Hardcover

On Monsters takes you down a dark stair into the cellar of the human mind. A place where all that is horrible and inconceivably wicked in the universe scurries about in the shadows ready to leap out upon you from the darkness. Mankind's fascination with, and dread of, monsters is a part of the human experience that stretches back in the past as far as we are able to see. What these ideas are have changed and grown through the centuries in step with the growth of our understanding of the world and our place in it. To the ancients monsters were outside, outside of us and outside the world that the gods had made. Rapacious and insatiable it was up to the great heroes, Beowulf and St. George, to slay them. And to some extent this is still valid today. But by the time of the Greeks people had begun to realize that things were not that simple. There could be human monsters too, Medea serving her children for supper.

Dr. Asma undertakes to lead you through the entire conceptual history of monsters. A compendium of monsterology beginning with Alexander and his battle with monsters in India on up to the present, every type of monster is given its turn. As our understanding of monsters develops you can see the monsters evolving. The cyclops of the ancients, the witches of the medieval church, the physical mutants of science, the Frankenstein's monster and the werewolves of popular culture, the Hitler's, the John Wayne Gracie's and the monsters of our own psyche. What they are and how they are understood in today's world the understanding of monsters is not simple and has simple answers. Perhaps this is the lesson of the whole book for in the end the monster's are within us all. And if we are ever to control them it is here that they must be faced. This book will give you some fresh insights into some of the darker recesses of the human mind which in turn gives one a better understanding of how you can control them in your own life.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars What is a Monster? December 9, 2009

By SD VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears by Stephen Asma attempts to answer this question from a wide range of fascinating perspectives.

Asma begins with the origin of the word monster: "Monster derives from the Latin word monstrum, which in turn derives from the root monere (to warn). To be a monser is to be an omen." From there, Asma explores symbolic and literal monsters, the perception of monsters throughout history to the present day as well as their role in the future.

Asma's overall definition of what has been perceived as monsters is broad, encompassing mythological ones such as griffins and manticores to serial killers like John Wayne Gacy. Asma even delves into horror movies or "torture porn," such as Hostel.

The Loch Ness Monster is mentioned briefly a couple of times. Bigfoot doesn't make an appearance at all. This isn't that kind of book.

Instead, Asma explores all the facets and connotations of the monstrous:

As detailed in the ancient histories of Pliny and Herodotus
-Greek mythology
-as archetypes
-Modern-day criminal monsters
-Future monsters
-literary monsters such as Grendel and Frankenstein's creature
-Biblical monsters
-psychological
-biological: mutants
-historical
-cultural
-medical
-scientific

In chronicling the role of monsters throughout history, Asma lists some idiotic, once widely-held beliefs. One of the more outrageous ones (at least from a modern-day, enlightened point of view) is that in the middle ages, it was thought that the following caused a mother to give birth to a monster [meaning a mutant or freak]:
Too great a quantity of seed
Too little quantity
The imagination
the narrowness or smallness of the womb
the indecent posture of the mother, as when, being pregnant, she has sat too long with her legs crossed, or pressed against her womb

Surprisingly, rather than assembling a menagerie of fearsome and fantastic creatures, Asma gathers human monstrosities, such as psychopaths. The demonization of "the other" in society (other races, religions, cultures), he argues, is a form of monster-making.

Given the many and varied examples of monsters throughout history, Asma concludes that there isn't "one compelling definition of monster"; however, most monsters share the same characteristics:

"Monsters cannot be reasoned with. Monsters are generally ugly and inspire horror. Monsters are unnatural. Monsters are overwhelmingly powerful. Monsters are evil. Monsters are misunderstood. Monsters cannot be understood...They reflect the fears of specific eras. But they also reflect more universal human anxieties and cognitive tendencies, the stuff that gives us human solidarity...."

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating August 15, 2010

By Cultural_Artifacts

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

"On Monsters" is written in a conversational style that is easy and pleasant to follow. Facts and ideas are arranged in logical ways that build on each other so as the reader accumulates the information, he or she is also zooming along with that unique pleasure that comes from reading a book that truly engages one's mind. I never felt I was reading a textbook, but each paragraph made me hungry for the next in such a way that I consumed the book and finished with a great sigh of satisfaction. I have read other books on "monsters", but this one, while building from a familiar starting place, added insights and new information peppered throughout enough to add to my knowledge and entertain me for a couple of nights. I enjoyed it so much I am going to read the Author's other books. Who can resist the title, "The Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha"? That's the next one for me.