Monstrous

Long ago, sea monsters were a normal part of maps and treatises on natural history. People who went to sea could expect to meet nightmarish monsters on the waves.

Today the monsters are no more, or else transformed into well-known fauna. Historian, professor, and author Erling Sandmo has written a book about twenty of the sea’s rulers and how they finally vanished under the waves for good, as all our scariest fantasies gave way to scientific truths, or were transformed into myths and fables.