Here’s the latest batch of books to come across our desks — enjoy!
The first book is written by the founder of an amazing chicken rescue organization, Sweet Peeps, based in Mobile, Alabama. If you’ve never visited an animal sanctuary (not a zoo) you’re missing out. And you don’t have to go to Alabama to find one — odds are there’s one not far from you. Here’s a great place to start.
Chickens Are Animals, Too!
by Tracey Winter Glover
illustrated by Mariella Travis
Join Fannie, a spirited and courageous chicken with a heart as big as her dreams, on an adventure of a lifetime in Chickens Are Animals, Too! After being rescued from a bleak future, Fannie finds warmth and love in Abbie’s home alongside a motley crew of pets. But when she learns that her fellow chickens are not considered animals by the world, Fannie’s feathery heart refuses to stand by. With a dash of pluck and determination, she organizes an unprecedented march on Washington, rallying chickens and allies from every corner to fight for recognition and rights.
The Well-Connected Animal: Social Networks and the Wondrous Complexity of Animal Societies
by Lee Alan Dugatkin
An engaging exploration of the wondrous social webs that permeate life in animal societies around the world.
It’s all about who you know. Whether vampire bats sharing blood meals for survival, field crickets remembering champion fighters, macaque monkeys forming grooming pacts after a deadly hurricane, or great tit birds learning the best way to steal milk–it pays to be well connected.
In this tour of the animal kingdom, evolutionary biologist Lee Alan Dugatkin reveals a new field of study, uncovering social networks that existed long before the dawn of human social media. He accessibly describes the latest findings from animal behavior, evolution, computer science, psychology, anthropology, genetics, and neurobiology, and incorporates interviews and insights from researchers he finds swimming with manta rays, avoiding pigeon poop, and stopping monkeys from stealing iPads. With Dugatkin as our guide, we investigate social networks in giraffes, elephants, kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, whales, bats, and more. From animal networks in Australia and Asia to Africa, Europe, and the Americas, The Well-Connected Animal is an eye-opening exposé of wild friends, enemies, and everything in between.
Stowaway: The Disreputable Exploits of the Rat
by Joe Shute
Rats are creatures which inspire fear and fascination in equal measure. Their lives are more closely entwined with humans than any other animal, but they remain the most misunderstood of all species.
Yet, arguably no animal has sacrificed more in the pursuit of human health but also been so resolutely blamed for spreading plague and pestilence. No animal has been so determinedly targeted by humans, and still managed to survive and thrive in our midst. No animal is so often derided as being vicious and cunning, but possesses such a rich and complex inner life.
In Stowaway, Joe Shute, explores our complex and often contradictory relationship with the rat. He travels the world from sub-Saharan Africa to the Rocky Mountains and visits some of the most rodent-infested cities on earth to unpick the myths we tell ourselves about rats and investigate the unexplored secrets of their own extraordinary lives.
Air Conditioning
By Hsuan L. Hsu
Air conditioning aspires to be unnoticed. Yet, by manipulating the air around us, it quietly conditions the baseline conditions of our physical, mental, and emotional experience. From offices and libraries to contemporary art museums and shopping malls, climate control systems shore up the fantasy of a comfortable, self-contained body that does not have to reckon with temperature. At the same time that air conditioning makes temperature a non-issue in (some) people’s daily lives, thermoception-or the sensory perception of temperature-is being carefully studied and exploited as a tool of marketing, social control, and labor management.
Yet air conditioning isn’t for everybody: its reliance on carbon fuels divides the world into habitable, climate-controlled bubbles and increasingly uninhabitable environments where AC is unavailable. Hsuan Hsu’s Air Conditioning explores questions about culture, ethics, ecology, and social justice raised by the history and uneven distribution of climate controlling technologies.
Fuel Fight
by Dale Andrew White
Orimulsion.
Prior to 1993, few Floridians knew the brand name of an oil substitute that their state’s largest electric utility wanted to be the first in the United States to import and burn. Yet the word and its definition would gradually become widely known, making bold headlines and becoming the topic of kitchen table and government forum debates about the advantages and disadvantages of a hybrid power plant fuel often referred to as “liquid coal.” Florida Power & Light’s pursuit of a state permit to retrofit one of its generating plants to use Orimulsion would become a costly, five-year legal battle that pit public officials against public officials and FPL against an expanding coalition of environmentalists, concerned citizens and corporate interests.
Here is the story of that bitter fuel fight and its surprising aftermath.
Coming Full Circle: How Americans Finally Got Things Right
by Budd Titlow and Mariah Tinger
Coming Full Circle, the latest 3-book release from Wildlife Biologist and Emeritus Wetlands Scientist Budd Titlow, captivates conscientious audiences with an odyssey through the heart of American history. Through the eyes of a diverse cast of characters, readers witness untold stories of resilience, determination, and the enduring spirit of human connection.
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John is co-author, with Midge Raymond, of the eco-mystery Devils Island, forthcoming in 2024. He is also author of the novels The Tourist Trail and Where Oceans Hide Their Dead. Co-founder of Ashland Creek Press and editor of Writing for Animals (also now a writing program).
