An impassioned plea for preserving animals’ lives.
The founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals emphasizes the importance of having “love, understanding, and respect for all animals.”
Newkirk (One Can Make a Difference, 2008, etc.) and Stone (The Trump Survival Guide, 2017, etc.) aim to celebrate nonhuman species and to argue against using them for scientific and medical research, clothing, entertainment, and food. Among animals’ “many talents, languages, and complex cultures,” the authors reveal astonishing facts about sea and air migration; communication among frogs, primates, and birds; cognitive abilities; courtship and fidelity; grief and mourning; animal empathy; and various forms of play. They highlight the variety and sophistication of animal intelligence, such as the Brazilian torrent frog’s intricate forms of tactile, vocal, and visual communications. The authors underscore animals’ capacity for emotion: Prairie vole parents, for example, stay together for life; animals who live in closely knit groups—such as gorillas and elephants—exhibit ritualistic behavior when a family member dies. “Animals love,” write the authors. “They grieve. They feel emotional pain. They worry. And they can anticipate pain.” After a wide-ranging and enlightening overview of animal wonders, the authors devote several chapters to campaigning against cruelty and exploitation. They point out that animal testing is an “extremely wasteful” method of finding treatments for human diseases, and they cite several noninvasive methods—e.g., experiments on stem cells, 3D–printed organoids, computer simulations, and bioinformatics—that are effective research methods. Not surprisingly, the authors argue against wearing clothing with fur or leather, claiming that much leather imported from China comes from “the hides of domestic dogs.” They also describe in horrifying detail the injuries to sheep in the shearing process, advocating for a number of plant-based and synthetic alternatives to wool. Similarly, they advocate “a whole-food, low-oil vegan diet” of plant-based substitutes for meat, eggs, butter, and cheese. As for entertainment, the authors suggest, not convincingly, that virtual reality and “lifelike animatronics” can substitute for seeing a real animal.
An impassioned plea for preserving animals’ lives.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9854-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.
A new life and book arise from the ashes of a devastating California wildfire.
These days, it seems the fires will never end. They wreaked destruction over central California in the latter months of 2018, dominating headlines for weeks, barely a year after Fies (Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, 2009) lost nearly everything to the fires that raged through Northern California. The result is a vividly journalistic graphic narrative of resilience in the face of tragedy, an account of recent history that seems timely as ever. “A two-story house full of our lives was a two-foot heap of dead smoking ash,” writes the author about his first return to survey the damage. The matter-of-fact tone of the reportage makes some of the flights of creative imagination seem more extraordinary—particularly a nihilistic, two-page centerpiece of a psychological solar system in which “the fire is our black hole,” and “some veer too near and are drawn into despair, depression, divorce, even suicide,” while “others are gravitationally flung entirely out of our solar system to other cities or states, and never seen again.” Yet the stories that dominate the narrative are those of the survivors, who were part of the community and would be part of whatever community would be built to take its place across the charred landscape. Interspersed with the author’s own account are those from others, many retirees, some suffering from physical or mental afflictions. Each is rendered in a couple pages of text except one from a fellow cartoonist, who draws his own. The project began with an online comic when Fies did the only thing he could as his life was reduced to ash and rubble. More than 3 million readers saw it; this expanded version will hopefully extend its reach.
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3585-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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