Rachel Corbett is a features writer at New York magazine and the author of You Must Change Your Life (Norton, 2016), which won the Marfield Prize, the National Award for Arts Writing, and The Monsters We Make (Norton, 2025). She has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and other publications. She grew up in Iowa and lives in New York City.
Praise for The Monsters We Make
“The Monsters We Make is narrated so sagely and coolly, I almost didn’t realize how much it had to teach. It is a provoking, moving, and original book that has stuck with me long since I turned its last page.”
— Maggie Nelson, New York Times best-selling author of The Argonauts
“Serial killers have spawned hundreds of books, but none like this. With a daughter’s heart and a reporter’s keen gaze, Rachel Corbett turns the stories inside out. She profiles the profilers―their methods, their hubris, and the evils they unwittingly commit. An expertly titrated mix of history, true crime, and memoir, The Monsters We Make is the most intriguing crime book I’ve read in quite some time.”
― Mary Roach, New York Times best-selling author of Fuzz, Gulp, and Stiff
“Corbett [is] a gifted storyteller … A highly readable, endlessly revealing primer on the homicidal mind.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A fast-paced history of criminal profiling from the Victorian era to the present… Evenhandedness permeates the account, elevating it above pulpy indulgence. Readers of true crime will be fascinated.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Fascinating. . . . We’re all now aware of criminal profiling, thanks to the likes of Silence of the Lambs and Mindhunter, but how does it really work? Corbett casts an entertainingly critical eye over the practice, taking us through a variety of case studies.”
—The Daily Mail
“Corbett succeeds in questioning the reliance on profiling in policing and ultimately, the stories we tell ourselves about who is a monster and why. A thought-provoking read for a culture obsessed with true crime.”
— Booklist
Journalist Rachel Corbett threads together her own family’s experience with murder with a study of criminal profiling, a pursuit that’s more art than science. — The Guardian
“If your tastes include true crime or police dramas, you’re already aware of the role that profiling plays in attempting to better understand violent acts. There’s a long history behind that discipline … [The Monsters We Make] expertly chronicles the complex issues that this science raises.”
― InsideHook
“A cornerstone of true crime, profiling, is the heart of The Monsters We Make by Rachel Corbett, who travels from Sherlock Holmes to the Chicago roots of the Unabomber.”
― Chicago Tribune
“In her gripping and illuminating The Monsters We Make, Rachel Corbett takes us on an effortless journey through the allure and perils of trying to grasp the criminal mind.”
― Benjamin Wallace, New York Times best-selling author of The Billionaire’s Vinegar and The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto
“The Monsters We Make is a compelling, page-turning book. Part suspenseful true-crime drama, part insightful intellectual history, and part searing memoir―and, thanks to Rachel Corbett’s affecting, elegantly crafted narrative, always a gripping story filled with an intriguing parade of deeply-reported characters.”
― Howard Blum, New York Times best-selling author of When the Night Comes Falling
“In The Monsters We Make, Rachel Corbett goes on an odyssey to show how society identifies the ‘manifestations of evil,’ and how they change over time. Using her fabulous investigative talents and a tenacity for research she delves into the science of behavioral forensics and writes a roadmap to understanding the minds of both criminals and profilers.”
― Robert K. Wittman, founder of the FBI Art Crime Team and New York Times best-selling author of Priceless and The Devil’s Diary
Rachel Corbett’s nonfiction masterclass The Monsters We Make plays directly into the sensibilities of the widespread true crime genre, but with exceptional self-awareness… Corbett and her family have experienced shocking violence, making her nonfiction work visceral as she seeks answers about her survival. She explores the melding of psychology and criminology as a way of understanding her own childhood, making the work equal parts investigation and reminiscence. — Little Village
