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Beloved Beasts

Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction

Michelle Nijhuis

$45.95

Hardback

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English
Norton
09 March 2021
In the late nineteenth century, humans came at long last to a devastating realization: their rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving scores of animal species to extinction. In Beloved Beasts, acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the history of the movement to protect and conserve other forms of life. From early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today's global effort to defend life on a larger scale, Nijhuis's spirited and engaging account documents the changes of heart that changed history (Dan Cryer, Boston Globe).

With urgency, passion, and wit (Michael Berry, Christian Science Monitor), she describes the vital role of scientists and activists such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, reveals the origins of vital organizations like the Audubon Society and the World Wildlife Fund, explores current efforts to protect species such as the whooping crane and the black rhinoceros, and confronts the darker side of modern conservation, long shadowed by racism and colonialism.

As the destruction of other species continues and the effects of climate change wreak havoc on our world, Beloved Beasts charts the ways conservation is becoming a movement for the protection of all species including our own.

By:  
Imprint:   Norton
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 239mm,  Width: 160mm,  Spine: 30mm
Weight:   598g
ISBN:   9781324001683
ISBN 10:   1324001682
Pages:   352
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Michelle Nijhuis is a project editor at the Atlantic, a contributing editor at High Country News, and an award-winning reporter whose work has been published in National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine. She is coeditor of The Science Writers' Handbook and lives in White Salmon, Washington.

Reviews for Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction

[A] defining and invaluable chronicle of an increasingly urgent lifesaving effort. -- Booklist (starred review) An engrossing history of conservation and its accomplishments...Compassionate yet realistic and candid throughout, Nijhuis makes a significant contribution to the literature on environmentalism. -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Nijhuis's comprehensive survey is sure to delight nature enthusiasts and those concerned with disappearing species. -- Publishers Weekly Beloved Beasts is the definitive history of the conservation movement, in all its turbulent, passionate, problematic glory. It shines a bright and unsparing light on environmentalism's most influential hidden figures, and breathes new life into Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and other heroes you thought you knew. The centuries-long campaign to protect our fellow creatures finally has the literary epic it deserves. -- Ben Goldfarb From the origin of the concept of species through the CRISPR revolution, Beloved Beasts is at once thoughtful and thought-provoking-a crucial addition to the literature of our troubled time. -- Elizabeth Kolbert If 'attention is prayer,' as Simone Weil suggests, then Michelle Nijhuis's carefully observed Beloved Beasts is a benediction bestowed not so much upon the men and women who carry out the work of species conservation but upon the very act of living in conversation with the more-than-human world. -- Elizabeth Rush What a lovely, timely book. Michelle Nijhuis's deeply mined research and wholehearted compassion for her subjects-human and animal alike-are evident on every page. -- John Vaillant Michelle Nijhuis has written a book that is both a beautiful, wise history and a measured call to action. By remembering the messy, bighearted, sometimes nearsighted, but ultimately hopeful efforts of those before us, we can be smarter as we embark on the profoundly human project of saving species other than our own. -- Florence Williams In a bravura turn, Michelle Nijhuis shapes three hundred years of conservation history into one riveting tale. Beloved Beasts brims with surprise, compelling characters, and opportunities for introspection about the motley human effort to catalogue, celebrate, and protect the other inhabitants of our planet. -- Elena Passarello


  • Commended for Rachel Carson Environment Book Award 2022
  • Winner of Rachel Carson Award 2021

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