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

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From fossil-hunting to the end of faith, Impossible Monsters is a gripping narrative history of how the discovery of dinosaurs and the science of evolution transformed our understanding of the world, toppled religious authority and gave rise to our secular age.

'This book dazzles in its originality and there is something you want to commit to memory on every page. A triumph' SATHNAM SANGHERA

'As thrilling as it is sweeping, populated by a brilliantly drawn cast of characters' TOM HOLLAND

In 1811, when the self-schooled daughter of a carpenter pulled some strange-looking bones from Britain's southern shoreline, few people dared to question that the Bible told the accurate history of the world. But Mary Anning had discovered the 'first' dinosaur, and over the next seventy-five years - as the science of palaeontology developed, as Charles Darwin posited theories of evolutionary biology, and as religious scholars identified the internal inconsistencies of the Scriptures - everything changed.

By the 1850s, dinosaurs were a prominent feature of the second Crystal Palace exhibition. By the 1860s, when Matthew Arnold stood on Dover Beach and saw faith ebbing away, Britain had plunged into a crisis of religious belief. By the 1870s, T.H. Huxley - Darwin's 'bulldog' - was preaching a new history of the world in which mankind was merely an accident of evolution. By 1886, following a six-year battle which had seen him beaten, imprisoned, and forcibly removed from Parliament, Charles Bradlaugh was able to take his seat in the House of Commons as the first openly atheist MP.

Told through the lives of the men and women who found these vital fossils and who fought about their meaning, some humble, some eccentric, some utterly brilliant, Impossible Monsters tells the story of the painful, complicated relationship between science and religion over these seventy-five years, of the growth of secularism, and of the role of dinosaurs and their discovery in changing perceptions about the Bible, history and mankind's place in the world.

Reviews

This book confirms what I've suspected for a while, that Michael Taylor is the most talented young historian around. This book dazzles in its originality and there is something you want to commit to memory on every page. A triumph -- SATHNAM SANGERA
An account of the discovery of deep time that is as thrilling as it is sweeping, populated by a brilliantly drawn cast of characters, and vivid with a Mesozoic bestiary -- TOM HOLLAND
A sweeping account of the discovery of dinosaurs and the horrifying depths of time, and their impact on god-fearing Victorians. Taylor marches us with panache from Bishop Ussher's impossibly young world to today's incomprehensibly old planet. We feel the awe and fright across society as the vast reptilian empires are brought to light -- ADRIAN DESMOND, author of Darwin's Sacred Cause
An outstanding and gripping revelation ... essential reading -- Simon Sebag Montefiore on The Interest
A magnificent book ... riveting * Evening Standard on The Interest *
Taylor can tell a story superbly * Economist on The Interest *
Scintillating ... brisk, gripping ... compulsively readable * Guardian on The Interest *
First-rate and riveting * The Times on The Interest *
A compelling story, graced with anecdotes but driven by argument ... scorching * New Statesman on The Interest *
One of the pleasures of teaching modern historians is that they go on to write great books like this -- Mary Beard on The Interest
Impressively researched and engagingly written -- Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times, on The Interest

Author Bio

Michael Taylor is an historian of colonial slavery, the British Empire and the British Isles. He graduated with a double first in history from the University of Cambridge, where he earned his PhD - and also won University Challenge. He has since been Lecturer in Modern British History at Balliol College, Oxford, and he is currently a Visiting Fellow at the British Library's Eccles Centre for American Studies.