This book gathers instances of the colossal throughout history, from the obelisks of Egypt to the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Roman Colosseum to the gigantic heads of the Olmecs and the imposing stone statues of Easter Island. It sets out a vision of the colossal that encompasses both the colossal in scale and another overlooked sense of the colossal: the archaic Greek kolossos (a ritual effigy) and its modern equivalents, in which the colossal stands as a double or substitute linking the ancient world to the twentieth-century world of the European surrealists.