"Humans have been fascinated by merpeople since ancient times. From the sirens of Homer's Odyssey to Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid and the film Splash (1984), myths, stories, and legends of half-human, half-fish creatures abound. In Merpeople: A Human History, Vaughn Scribner traces the long history of mermaids and mermen, taking in a wide variety of sources and using 117 striking images. From film to philosophy, church halls to coffee houses, ancient myth to modern science, Scribner shows that mermaids are--and always have been--everywhere."--book jacket.