This book offers a rich – both textually and visually illustrated – history of thinking about the human. Initially inspired by film, it can also be described as a triptych of efforts to biologically, politically, and economically determine the key element of the human species that would then be, using a slightly antiquated vocabulary, “human nature,” or in a more modern jargon, “the human condition.” For, as has been convincingly shown, notions of the human decisively form the cultural context of their creation. Therefore, the aspect of the sociology of knowledge and the history of ideas in this book is at least as represented – and as important – as the informed and witty philosophical-anthropological considerations.