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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.
This is not a history of monsters, but a history through monsters.
Intellectuals have long provoked scorn and irritation, even downright aggression. Many learned individuals have cast such hostility as a badge of honor, a sign of envy, or a form of resistance to inconvenient truths.
“On Pedantry” offers an altogether different perspective, revealing how the excessive use of learning has been a vice in Western culture since the days of Socrates.
Taking readers from the academies of ancient Greece to today’s culture wars, Arnoud Visser explains why pretentious and punctilious learning has always annoyed us.
