Book Review: OPEN THROAT by Henry Hoke

The narrator of Henry Hoke’s slender, evocative novel Open Throat begins their story with, “I’ve never eaten a person but today I might.” Described by the book’s publisher as a “lonely, lovable, queer mountain lion” whose pronouns are they/them, the lion shares their journey from an urban park to a suburban home to a busy Los Angeles …

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Book Review: An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

Guest book review by Gene Helfman. Put simply, reading An Immense World will change how you perceive the world. It certainly has altered my perception. I have decades of experience conducting research on, and teaching about, animal behavior. I thought I had a fairly sophisticated understanding of the natural world. But organisms and environments I …

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Book Review: JUSTICE FOR ANIMALS by Martha C. Nussbaum

As with so many books about the plight of animals in today’s world, Martha C. Nussbaum’s Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility needs to be read most of all by those who eat animals, visit zoos, buy puppies, and so on — in other words, those who may not realize (or who don’t wish to …

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Love is War: Just Another Meat-Eating Dirtbag

Boy meets girl. Girl goes veg. Boy goes off the deep end. And so begins this heartfelt, occasionally hilarious and generally brilliant graphic novel about one man’s struggle to resist his girlfriend’s vegetarian (and ultimately vegan) calling. The protagonist, Michael, is an army vet who returns to the US and falls for a girl he …

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Eco-Fiction, Edited by John Stadler

The stories in Eco-Fiction, most written in the mid-20th century, are by very well-known authors. Some are sci-fi, some are dated, and others are sadly prescient, such as Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” which makes the connection between authoritarianism and ecological disaster.

Sixty Harvests Left: Regenerating our planet and ourselves

I’ve long believed that the Dust Bowl years were the result of rampant over-farming and generally awful land management. And while this is true, what I didn’t realize until I had read Sixty Harvests Left was that even back then, when the “dusters” were an ever-present threat, there were those in positions of power who …

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The best environmental books we’ve read in 2022

Philosopher Albert Camus summed it up best when he wrote: “The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” The books we’ve highlighted below include a number of writers, including our reviewers, who are trying to do just that. We hope you enjoy the reviews and that you support these amazing writers. …

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The Creative Lives of Animals: Understanding the artists around us

Creativity is something that is easier to identify than to explain. And one person’s definition of creativity may vary from your definition. For proof, you need only enter the modern art wing of a museum to hear “Why is that art?” uttered. But though creativity may be in the eye of the beholder, nobody would …

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Halcyon Journey: Searching for Kingfishers

Kingfishers are birds more often heard than seen. Walk next to Bear Creek here in the Rogue Valley and you will probably hear them, though seeing them is not so easy. Fortunately, we have a new book about the kingfisher by Marina Richie to shed light on this fascinating bird. Marina takes us along with …

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Eco-Activism 101: Not on My Watch

Not on My Watch: How a Renegade Whale Biologist Took on Governments and Industry to Save Wild Salmon by Alexandra Morton Guest book review by Gene Helfman. A colleague of mine, a federal agency biologist, finishes his emails with, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Alexandra Morton has been outraged for decades. Not only …

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Deer America: Rewilding begins outside your front door

Deer are a common sight here in Ashland, Oregon. And a common source of conflict between residents. Some want to see the deer killed and others (like us) want to see the deer left alone. Fortunately, the deer have been fairly expressive as of late and one deer penned this letter for High Country News …

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