Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion

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Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion Author: Format: Paperback / softback First Published: Published By: Vintage Publishing
string(3) "352"
Pages: 352 Language: English ISBN: 9781529931341 Categories: , , , , , , , ,

Impossible Monsters is the captivating story of the discovery of the dinosaurs and how it upended our understanding of the origins of the world. ‘An astonishing book about an extraordinary subject’ PETER FRANKOPAN ‘As thrilling as it is sweeping’ TOM HOLLAND ‘This book dazzles in its originality . . . a triumph’ SATHNAM SANGHERA In 1811, a twelve-year-old girl uncovered some strange-looking bones in Britain’s southern shoreline. They belonged to no known creature and were buried beneath a hundred feet of rock. Over the next two decades, as several more of these ‘impossible monsters’ emerged from the soil, the leading scientists of the day were forced to confront a profoundly disturbing possibility: the Bible, as a historical account of the Earth’s origins, was wildly wrong. This is the dramatic story of the crisis that engulfed science and religion when we discovered the dinosaurs. It takes us into the lives and minds of the extraordinary men and women who made these heretical discoveries, those who resisted them, as well as the pioneering thinkers, Darwin most famous among them, who took great risks to construct a new account of the earth’s and mankind’s origins. Impossible Monsters is the riveting story of a group of people who not only thought impossible things but showed them to be true. In the process they overturned the literal reading of the Bible, liberated science from the authority of religion and ushered in the secular age. ‘Truly marvellous … an intellectual thriller’ RICHARD HOLMES ‘A stunning work … of surprises and revelations’ STEVE BRUSATTE

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Excellent . . . Everything that popular scholarly history should be . . . written with clarity, zest, and wit -- Piers Brendon * LIterary Review * Impossible Monsters captivatingly outlines how the unearthing of strange bones toppled traditional understanding of the origins of the world . . . rather miraculous -- Roger Lewis * Telegraph **** * Marvellous . . . Impossible Monsters is a work of remarkable range. Taylor . . . belongs to that rare class of writers who can effortlessly encompass both scientific arcana and intellectual currents. It is also to his credit that he every so often takes us away from the high tables to show us what ordinary people made of these huge strides in thinking -- Pratinav Anil * Guardian * Well-paced . . . fascinating . . . And it has a charming leitmotif, namely, the periodic discovery of yet another dinosaur, each seemingly larger and more monstrous than the last . . . Taylor movingly tells us of the agony inflicted by scientific discovery on the “honest doubters” -- A N Wilson * The Times * Eminently readable and well-researched . . . He writes well, knows his subject and has a fine eye for detail * Spectator *

Author Biography

Michael Taylor is the author of The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2021, chosen as a Daily Telegraph Book of the Year and described as 'riveting' (The Times) and 'compulsively readable' (Guardian). He was born in 1988 and graduated with a double first in history from the University of Cambridge, where he earned his PhD. He has since been Lecturer in Modern British History at Balliol College, Oxford, and a Visiting Fellow at the British Library's Eccles Centre for American Studies.