An urgent, humane, and exceptionally well-documented book.
Financial Times chief features writer Mance explores what humans living in the destructive Anthropocene Era can do to help—and hopefully save—the animals of the Earth.
Early on, the author observes that loving animals is “one of western society’s core values.” Yet the thoughtless, often inhumane ways that people treat them go against this principle—and against “rational thinking.” Drawing on research and interviews, Mance brings to light the many contradictions in the human-animal relationship while offering insight into how individuals can protect an animal kingdom in crisis. The author, a former meat eater who is now vegan, reminds readers that humans “started off being hunted by [animals] before we turned into hunters.” He argues that the notion of animal pain did not become a seriously discussed topic in ethics until philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote about it in 1789. Taking temporary jobs at a slaughterhouse and observing a Portuguese fishery and fish market, Mance witnessed—and questioned—the taking of animal lives for human consumption. He also investigated meat alternatives such as the Impossible burger and went on hunting trips to help him understand when and how the killing of animals might be justified. The author then goes on to explore the problematic nature of the love humans feel toward animals. He joined idealistic but at times comically confused animal rights activists and attended a San Francisco dog convention where “people dressed as corgis, and corgis dressed as people.” Pets, writes Mance, complicate matters by taking the focus off of the entire animal world and making humans believe that to engage with their fellow creatures, they must possess them. Written with an ever present awareness of climate change and the ecological disaster it portends for all terrestrial life, this clearsighted book offers a clarion call to not only foster greater sensitivity toward the animal world as a whole, but to recognize the Earth as more than just a “human-shaped” space.
An urgent, humane, and exceptionally well-documented book.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984879-65-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
For fans only.
The hoodie-and-shorts-clad Pennsylvania senator blends the political and personal, and often not nicely.
Fetterman’s memoir addresses three major themes. The first—and the one he leads with—is depression and mental illness, which, combined with a stroke and heart trouble, brought him to a standstill and led him to contemplate suicide. The second is his rise to national-level politics from a Rust Belt town; as he writes, he’s carved a path as a contentious player with a populist streak and a dislike for elites. There are affecting moments in his personal reminiscences, especially when he writes of the lives of his working-class neighbors in impoverished southwestern Pennsylvania, its once-prosperous Monongahela River Valley “the most heartbreaking drive in the United States.” It’s the third element that’s problematic, and that’s his in-the-trenches account of daily politics. One frequent complaint is the media, as when he writes of one incident, “I am not the first public figure to get fucked by a reporter, and I won’t be the last. What was eye-opening was the window it gave into how people with disabilities navigate a world that doesn’t give a shit.” He reserves special disdain for his Senate race opponent Mehmet Oz, about whom he wonders, “If I had run against any other candidate…would I have lost? He got beaten by a guy recovering from a stroke.” Perhaps so, and Democratic stalwarts will likely be dismayed at his apparent warmish feelings for Donald Trump and dislike of his own party’s “performative protests.” If Fetterman’s book convinces a troubled soul to seek help, it will have done some good, but it’s hard to imagine that it will make much of an impression in the self-help literature. One wonders, meanwhile, at sentiments such as this: “If men are forced to choose between picking their party or keeping their balls, most men are going to choose their balls.”
For fans only.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593799826
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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