I thought I knew a thing or two about gardening. But since undertaking a rather intensive gardener training program I now know just how little I actually knew about gardening. I’m not alone. It turns out that so much of what we’ve been told about gardening and farming over the past few decades — from …
The other day I saw an ad for a new model of Audi. In it, a woman enters a butcher shop, and the butcher, a female, knowing that this woman is looking for something more “red blooded,” ushers her into the back room, where we find the new Audi Q8. “Dig in,” the butcher says. …
Through a Vegan Studies Lens: Textual Ethics and Lived Activism, edited by Laura Wright, is part of the series “Cultural Ecologies of Food in the 21st Century” from the University of Nevada Press, bringing attention to the ways in which our food choices “produce ecologies of effects, environmentally and otherwise.” I am thrilled to see …
The cover of Ethical Vegetarianism and Veganism, a collection of essays edited by Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey, features a photograph of a rescued chicken taken by Jo-Anne McArthur. Rescued is an optimistic word because the life of a chicken freed from a factory farm is often all-too-brief. Chickens bred for food are pumped so …
Reviewed by James Ballowe, Distinguished Professor English Emeritus from Bradley University Strachan Donnelley founded the Center for Humans and Nature in 2003 after years of pondering the ethical responsibilities of humans within the natural environment. Early on in his life after receiving a doctorate in philosophy, he became a member of the Hastings Center, the think …
We want to believe that cows live happy lives. From our childhoods of Old MacDonald and his farm, field trips and cartoons and stuffed animals, we are raised to believe they are happy. The dairy industry tells us they are happy. The advertisements we see on TV reinforce the illusion. But it is only an …
I enjoy reading children’s books that help kids connect with the environment and spark a passion for conservation. The Man with Bees in His Beard by Brian Dempsey, published by Chatwin Books, is advertised as just such a book. The main character in the book is an old man wandering in nature who has a …
This is our third year of recapping the best books we’ve read over the past year. Here are the 2017 and 2016 lists. We’re so glad that the number of both readers and reviewers of EcoLit Books have grown enough to now have an annual tradition of celebrating our favorite books of the year. And …
Sigrid Nunez’s new novel, The Friend, is a meditation on grief, writing, and the transcendent power of the human-canine bond. It is also the winner of the 2018 National Book Award for fiction. How is one to mourn the sudden death of a loved one? For the novel’s narrator, whose best friend and literary mentor …
Reviewed by James Ballowe, Distinguished Professor English Emeritus from Bradley University In his “Prologue” to The Way of Coyote, Gavin Van Horn, Director of Cultures of Conservation at the Center for Humans and Nature, leaves no doubt as to what his book is about. Before coming to Chicago, his “Plan A” was to inhabit a cabin …
The title of this book almost begs incredulity. The Great Cat & Dog Massacre? When I first saw the book cover I struggled to imagine what the book was about exactly. One of the pictures features men in helmets carrying animals, so I initially assumed the massacre was the result of bombings. But, no. This …
