Awards

• Nominated for American Society for 18th-Century Studies Louis Gotschalk Prize 2012
• Nominated for Jacques Barzun Prize 2011
• Nominated for Leo Gershoy Award 2011
• Runner-up for Katharine Briggs Folklore Award 2011
• Runner-up for Katharine Briggs Folklore Award 2011.

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[Smith argues that] the attacks are a locus wherein we can witness the transition from early modernity to modernity itself. In other words, rather than being simply a remnant of backwards superstition, the beast was made possible by an emerging news and media culture (mainly in the form of periodicals), a relatively nascent but increasingly vigorous scientific naturalism associated with the Enlightenment, and religious and political unrest and controversy, much of which foreshadows the revolution that would begin in 1790 and usher in the modern world...Will Monsters of the Gevaudan: The Making of a Beast settle the debate about the nature of the beast for those interested in this strange historical episode? Almost certainly not, but the study should go a long way toward rescuing it both from oddball conjecture and contemptuous dismissal as a subject of serious inquiry. -- James Williams PopMatters 20110308

[Smith argues that] the attacks are a locus wherein we can witness the transition from early modernity to modernity itself. In other words, rather than being simply a remnant of backwards superstition, the beast was made possible by an emerging news and media culture (mainly in the form of periodicals), a relatively nascent but increasingly vigorous scientific naturalism associated with the Enlightenment, and religious and political unrest and controversy, much of which foreshadows the revolution that would begin in 1790 and usher in the modern world...Will Monsters of the Gevaudan: The Making of a Beast settle the debate about the nature of the beast for those interested in this strange historical episode? Almost certainly not, but the study should go a long way toward rescuing it both from oddball conjecture and contemptuous dismissal as a subject of serious inquiry. -- James Williams PopMatters 20110308 In 1764, as the Enlightenment dawned over Paris, a series of terrible killings in central France gave birth to a mystery that has endured for centuries. Jay M. Smith's penetrating work of history revisits a cultural turning point in which stories of werewolves competed for attention with groundbreaking works of science. Barnes & Noble Review 20110329

Author Information

Jay M. Smith is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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