An intriguing, if somewhat heavy-handed, argument for veganism.
A debut book contends that humanity can save itself through veganism.
These days, it seems people are facing more existential crises than they have time to contemplate: climate change, environmental degradation, income inequality, sexism, racism, and plain old violence. “I believe that man can change,” writes Saunders in the introduction to this work. “But it will take a revolution of empathy, compassion, and mercy, not toward the human species but toward the creatures with whom we share this earth—the animals.” According to the author, humans’ carnivorous behavior is their true original sin, the one that underlies all the others. The torture and slaughter of animals are injustices that people have rationalized, making it easier for them to defend other systems of subjugation, like patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. Saunders takes readers through a wide range of disciplines and eras to make his case, exploring the origins of hunting and eating meat, contemporary research on what nutrients people need (and from what sources they are available), and how veganism builds on the values of earlier radical groups like the Romantics, the Luddites, the Transcendentalists, and abolitionists. Drawing from science, literature, and politics, the author maintains that the next stage of human freedom is to untether the race from the greatest vestige of its unenlightened past: the flesh of other creatures. Saunders demonstrates a good deal of erudition, but his tone is often abrasive and hyperbolic, as when he attempts to discredit high-protein, low-carb diets: “You may lose weight in the short-term on a low-carb diet if your goal is to fit into a skinnier casket.” With his cherry-picked nutritional studies, jeremiads against capitalism, and fondness for quoting Thoreau, the author will likely remind readers of a particularly dogmatic undergraduate. That is unfortunate, since this approach obscures his most enthralling and persuasive argument—that living off the killing of animals decreases people’s empathy. Tone aside, there is much here that should give the progressive meat eater pause. The book is a reminder that while vegans may sometimes sound patronizing to carnivores, their complaints about the food system cannot be ignored forever.
An intriguing, if somewhat heavy-handed, argument for veganism.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-977805-48-5
Page Count: 508
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
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