Peter Singer was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946, and educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford. He has taught at the University of Oxford, New York University, University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of California at Irvine, and the La Trobe University. He was the founding President of Animal Liberation (Victoria) and is now the President of the Australian and New Zealand Federation of Animal Societies, a peak body for animal welfare and animal rights organisations in Australia and New Zealand. He is the co-founder and President of The Great Ape Project, an international effort to obtain basic rights for chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. In 1994 Peter Singer was a candidate for the Australian Greens at a by-election for the House of Representatives, and gained 29% of the vote, an Australian record for the Greens. Peter Singer first became well known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation. His other books include Democracy and Disobedience; Practical Ethics; The Expanding Circle; Marx; Hegel; Animal Factories (with Jim Mason); The Reproduction Revolution (with Deane Wells); Should the Baby Live? (with Helga Kushe); How are We to Live?; and Rethinking Life and Death.
Probably the single most influential document in the history of ... animal welfare * Guardian * If I have to pick the book that had the most impact on me, I would say Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, since I instantly became a vegetarian after reading it -- Jane Goodall An extraordinary book which has had extraordinary effects ... It galvanised a generation into action * Independent on Sunday * Widely recognized as the foundational text within the animal liberation movement, Peter Singer's Animal Liberation opened my eyes to the radical philosophy that all animals are worthy of equal consideration. Singer's latest, Animal Liberation Now, will motivate a new generation of readers who are resolutely committed to creating a just society for all -- Joaquin Phoenix The indispensable foundational text for the movement, new and updated with the honesty and philosophical depth characteristic of all of Singer's work -- J. M. Coetzee