Book Review: The Inhuman Empire: Wildlife, Colonialism, Culture

When the British colonized India throughout the 18th century they imported their narrative about the relationships between human and non-human animals. A narrative of violence and cruelty, in which wild animals were born to be hunted. But as author Sadhana Naithani writes in The Inhuman Empire, India was home to folk narratives that had existed …

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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 planet and, honestly, it has taken an emotional toll. Which is why I’d much rather read novels that tackle climate change (and not necessarily of …

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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 scrutiny in how he and his lab treated dogs. In college, when I learned about Pavlov and classical conditioning, I never considered how Pavlov tested …

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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 of society’s empathy for the animals within its walls. The National Zoo opened in 1891, thanks in large part to the advocacy of William Temple …

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Environmental Armageddon in Cannabis Country

“An ideological descendant of the Gold Rush, the green rush serves as yet another get-rich-quick fantasy founded on the erasure of Native People …aptly named the green rush, this surge in cannabis production evokes gold-rush era ideology of manifest destiny, resource extraction, and wealth accumulation.”  –Dr. Kaitlin Reed (p.123) Dr. Kaitlin Reed, a Yurok woman scholar, …

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Book Review: The Gatekeeper of America’s Seasons: Edwin Way Teale’s four iconic environmental books

Author Edwin Way Teale, a somewhat forgotten naturalist extraordinaire, was a pleasing lyrical writer who followed the seasons across America in cross-country car trips with his wife Nellie four times in his lifetime.    These coast-to-coast meanderings across America resulted in four signature natural history books:  North With The Spring (1951), Autumn Across America (1956), Journey Into Summer (1960), and the Pulitzer …

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Book Review: The Garden Politic: Seeds of evolution and revolution

Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, activist, author and orator, was also a gardener. In 1949 he published an article about growing pumpkins and in it he wrote: The ground was prepared –seed sown– and the planet cultivated by our own colored hands; and although the soil is American, it took no offense on the account of …

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Bear Markets and Beyond: A Bestiary of Business Terms

Why do animals lend themselves to economic and financial jargon? Perhaps it’s because we need visual and tangible ways or relating to concepts that are so vague, confusing or downright opaque. Bear Markets and Beyond by Dhruti Shah and Dominic Bailey provides an A-Z compendium of animal financial jargon. From an “alligator spread” that has …

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Dark Emu: Rethinking Australian history (and our own)

Who were the first humans to bake bread? If you had asked me a few months ago, I would have probably guessed the Egyptians. But what if it was the Aboriginal Australians? And not by any small margin. There is evidence to suggest that Australians were cultivating grains and baking bread more than 30,000 years …

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