Melanie Challenger works as a researcher on the history of humanity and the natural world, and environmental philosophy. She is the author of On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature. She received a Darwin Now Award for her research among the Canadian Inuit, and the Arts Council International Fellowship with the British Antarctic Survey for her work on the history of whaling. melaniechallenger.com
Challenger is a poet of some standing: her descriptions of the places she visits are dazzlingly good * * Scotsman * * Amid solid research, there is fine and truly poetic prose. The big loops of this peregrinating work intersect in interesting ways . . . A strangeness is evoked, a strangeness that conveys how, in spite of all our erudition, we walk the earth in the twenty-first century as in a dream * * New York Times * * Praise for On Extinction: Wide-ranging and often beautiful . . . Challenger is an exquisite writer -- OLIVIA LAING * * Observer * * Melanie Challenger's erudite book confronts the refusal to embrace our animal nature and wrestles with the delusion and fear that underlie that refusal. In a time when so much of the rest is collapsing, deconstructing the myth of human specialness, and the ways it is implicated in nonhuman suffering and destruction, is urgent. Challenger shows us that our moral awakening is not only about changing how we treat the Earth, but also about transforming how we see ourselves -- EILEEN CRIST * * author of Abundant Earth: Towards an ecological civilisation * * Melanie Challenger offers poetic and erudite meditation on the relationship of our species to the rest of the organic world, and especially to the species to which we are most closely related . . . Compelling -- HARRIET RITVO * * Arthur J. Conner Professor of History, MIT * * Erudite, lyrical, delightfully troubling and full of unexpected convergences. A wonderful exploration of the tensions that beset the human animal trying to find our way. I was entranced by this beautiful weave of history, biology and philosophy -- DAVID GEORGE HASKELL * * author of The Forest Unseen * * With this book, Melanie Challenger fearlessly plunges into the biggest question of our time: how can we rediscover our animal selves, before it is too late? How can we discover our true place in the wider world we are destroying? Each of us has to answer this question for ourselves. This book is a guide for you on the journey -- PAUL KINGSNORTH What an interesting book! The recognition that we are animals should come less as a slap in the face than as a welcome reminder of the great resources that can come from paying attention to the ways we and our various cousins handle our journeys on this difficult but beautiful planet -- BILL McKIBBEN * * author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? * * Deepened my understanding of the world . . . An illuminating, beautifully written and unique philosophical inquiry by a wide-ranging and original thinker and a powerful call for a new ethic for our relationship with the rest of the living world . . . Quite simply, a rare and important marvel -- LUCY JONES * * author of Losing Eden * * Melanie Challenger's wonderful book teaches me this: our blazing continuity with the depth of time and the whole of life. It is a huge, complex and triumphant thing: challenging, but also celebratory, courageous, mournful and apprehensive. Her language is lovely: exact and lyrical and sparklingly full of suggestion and implication. It is a hymn to generosity. I know it will be something I will return to again and again -- ADAM NICOLSON * * author of The Seabird's Cry * *