Preface
1. Kingsnakes and Beauty Queens
2. The Problem of the Serpent
3. From Mademoiselle Dorita to Britney Spears: The Snake Charmer Girls
4. A Mouse in Your Teeth
5. Say Amen and Pass the Cottonmouth
6. Python Pocketbooks
7. Who's a Good Boy?
8. Snakes Are Not Cheap: Titanoboa and Other Monsters in the Lake
9. The Hobbyist
10. Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth
11. Magnanimity and True Courage
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
Feared and worshiped in equal measure, snakes have captured the imagination of poets, painters, and philosophers for centuries. From Ice Age cave drawings to Snakes on a Plane, this creature continues to enthrall the public. But what harm has been caused by our mythologizing? While considering the dangers of stigma, Erica Wright moves from art and pop culture to religion, fetish, and ecologic disaster. This book considers how the snake has become more symbol than animal, a metaphor for how we treat whatever scares us the most, whether or not our panic is justified.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in the The Atlantic.