The Modern Myths

Myths are usually seen as stories from the depths of time – fun and fantastical, but no longer believed by anyone. Yet, as Philip Ball shows, we are still writing them – and still living them – today. From ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and ‘Frankenstein’ to ‘Batman’, many stories written in the past few centuries are commonly, perhaps glibly, called ‘modern myths’. But Ball argues that we should take that idea seriously. He tales the reader on a wide-ranging tour of our collective imagination, asking what some of its most popular stories reveal about the nature of being human in the modern age.