Book Review: The Burning Earth, A History
Reading non-fiction books about climate change has, over the years, come to feel like a form of masochism. Rarely do I come away feeling optimistic about the future of this …
History
Book Review: Stowaway: The Disreputable Exploits of the Rat
We have the pandemic to thank for this eye-opening, empathetic and long-overdue tribute to one of our most misunderstood and widely despised relatives. The rat. And I use relative intentionally …
North Woods, a novel by Daniel Mason
Random House, 2023 “Shivers of lust passed through his elytra as he found her scent grow stronger,” and there we are, in the head of an Elm Bark beetle, one …
Pavlov’s Dogs
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) was not the first scientist to test on animals, nor was he the last. But he is perhaps the most famous. And he has somehow escaped mainstream …
Book Review: Our Kindred Creatures: The birth of the American animal rights movement
Imagine it is 1866 and you are strolling the streets of New York City. The first thing you might notice are the hundreds upon hundreds of horses pulling people in …
Book Review: Casey Huegel’s wonderfully detailed Cleaning up the Bomb Factory: Grassroots Activism and Nuclear Waste in the Midwest
Too often, environmental writers fail to capture the complexities that make their genre so interesting. Instead, they tell tales of good versus evil, of right against wrong. While parts of many stories …
Book Review: Entangled Life
Funny the difference a word makes. Restaurants generally don’t advertise “fungi” on their menus. But “mushrooms” and “truffles” are a different story. Even though they are the same thing. Which …
New and forthcoming environmental books (March 2024)
Here are some of the latest books to land on our desks. Please take a moment to scroll down and check them out! Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform …
Book Review: The Quickening
Humans have bestowed many rather grandiose names upon the region we otherwise know as Antarctica. It has been called the Last Continent, the Last Wilderness, the End of the Earth. …
Book Review: Entangled Encounters at the National Zoo
In Entangled Encounters at the National Zoo: Stories from the Animal Archive author Daniel Vandersommers explores the evolution of the National Zoo as well as the far more limited evolution …
Book Review: How To Be Animal, A New History of What it Means to Be Human
By Melanie Challenger, (Penguin Books, March, 2021) To call someone an animal is considered a grave insult, but it is also the truth. We, the humans, we are all animals. …