Hallo, friends!

Today’s Notes from a Science Historian:

• Monstery fiction and nonfiction I’m reading this fall

• Reviewed in the American Historical Review!

• Humans: A Monstrous History in your classroom?

• New podcast episode

• An upcoming Humans event in Amsterdam

Reading this fall

Internet search engines are sliding towards their peak uselessness (1996?), and people are asking stochastic parrots (LLM-based genAI) questions instead of visiting websites. The websites of media outlets, organizations, and authors are getting only a tiny fraction of the traffic they did a few years ago. In this timeline, word-of-mouth recommendations are more important than ever for getting the word out about books.

If you’re hunting for your next read, gift idea, or book club book, here’s a sampling of what I’ll be reading this fall. Please consider sharing your own suggestions in the comments if you feel inspired, or sharing this newsletter with a bookish buddy!

Horror is a new genre for this scaredy-cat. The next level will be ghosts, and Tanarive Due’s THE REFORMATORY, based on a real reform school in the Jim Crow South, is where I’ll start. I’m hoping that the historical-ness will help manage the fear. You can listen to Due on the Our Opinions Are Correct podcast.

Annalee Newitz, co-host (with Charlie Jane Anders) of the Our Opinions Are Correct podcast (currently on hiatus but the wonderful archive is worth inhaling), writes terrific fiction and nonfiction. Their latest novel, A WALL IS ALSO A ROAD, is set in a distant future in which a graduate student from an alien species of slime mould rocks up in ancient Pompeii. What’s not to like? Annalee reads the novel’s opening on YouTube here. Pre-order it now to help get Annalee into the bestseller lists again!

Historian of medicine Lindsey Fitzharris’s SLEUTH HOUND: THE CASE OF THE REAL SHERLOCK HOLMES is out this month! If you read murder mysteries, this biography of the real doctor who inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a must-read. You can pre-order it now and give Lindsey a chance to hit the bestseller lists again, too! Lindsey also has a humorous medical history YouTube channel, Under The Knife.

Anna Caig’s debut novel, THE WISE WITCH OF ORKNEY, has been in my possession for months, but now that it’s spooky season, and reading fiction is vital for my next nonfiction book, it’s time to get reading! The paperback is out now.

Anand Giridharadas’s MAN IN THE MIRROR: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City is just out. On May 1 2023 Jordan Neely, a homeless man struggling with mental illness, died while riding the New York City subway when another passenger, Daniel Penny, put him in a chokehold. Anand spent two kyears doing deep reporting work, interviewing dozens of people for this work of nonfiction. By telling the story of this tragedy he holds up a mirror to a city and a country. MAN IN THE MIRROR is excerpted in The New Yorker. Anand’s powers of observation and his compassionate prose come through here and in the opening pages of the book, which I’ve just begun reading.

I’ll be reading Daniel Kraus’s PARTIALLY DEVOURED: How Night of the Living Dead Saved My Life and Changed the World in preparation for the Peculiar Book Club live YouTube show on October 22. It’s free to attend live! You can join the live comment stream! Your comments will float onto the screen on the recorded show 4EVER! And if you join the club and become a Peculiar VIP (starts at $5/month) you can join the Green Room chat with authors before the show, and enjoy Peculiar community Zooms and other goodies.

Humans was reviewed in American Historical Review!

Sometimes you read a review of your book and feel as if the reviewer reached into your brain and soul and read exactly what you meant to say. Jenny Spinks's review of HUMANS in The American Historical Review is one of these. (If you don’t have a subscription through an institution or membership, here’s an archived version.) Jenny calls the book “dazzling….an exciting, provocative, and intellectually ambitious fusion of compelling case studies, heartfelt polemic, and reflections on the practice of history. It can, and should, matter to historians in a variety of fields, as well as to a much wider audience.”

In my years in academia, especially when on the job market, I heard a few snide descriptions of my research interests. There I was at the crossroads of history of science, the age of European exploration, and the invention of the human through ideas about monsters. But some people saw this as “quirky,” “cute studies,” “too interdisciplinary,” or “too narrow” (Narrow?!). Luckily reviewers of my books have been thoughtful, generous, and positive, with one weird and hilarious exception almost a decade ago. (Thank you, reviewers!!!)

Monster scholars are used to folks raising their eyebrows at what we study, unconvinced that there's anything important to say. This is especially true for minoritized scholars, particularly if they're untenured. I was especially pleased and grateful to read Spinks’s because, appearing in the AHR, it makes the case that monster studies is a field that’s as serious and vital as traditional fields of history, even if its sources range from legal documents to horror movies.

Humans: A Monstrous History in the classroom?

Educators and students! Have you assigned or been assigned (parts of) Humans or my previous book, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters in your classes, or put them on the syllabus for an upcoming class? I’d love to hear about it for A Thing! (ie my next book proposal.)

It would be awesome if you added the subject and/or course title to the comments to this newsletter, or email me by replying to this newsletter or via my website. Thank you!!!

Save the date! Friday 13 November, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

I’m doing a free book event in Amsterdam on Friday 13 November at 16:30! I’m thrilled that I’ll get to talk about HUMANS with someone whose reflections I can’t wait to hear. More when I’m allowed to share it…

New podcast episode

I spoke with Dr. Amy Fuller on the Challenging Histories podcast about historical research methods, and myths about science and modernity. I recounted explaining why a particular woodcut of a whale on a Renaissance map was an illustration of a real animal, not an imaginary creature, when someone stamped his foot and stormed out of the room (!). Other topics include ancient theories of climate, Beowulf, Star Trek, the Muppets, astrobiology, how women have been framed as monsters, and citizenship as a legal category.