Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Hope, as Emily Dickinson famously wrote, is the thing with feathers. Erik Anderson, on the other hand, regards our obsession with birds as too sentimental, too precious. Birds don't express hope. They express themselves. But this tension between the versions of nature that lodge in our minds and the realities that surround us is the central theme of Bird. This is no field guide. It's something far more unusual and idiosyncratic, balancing science with story, anatomy with metaphor, habitat with history. Anderson illuminates the dark underbelly of our bird fetish and offers a fresh, alternative vision of one of nature's most beloved objects. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Charles Siebert encounters a chimpanzee in a Florida retirement home for former ape entertainers. Of the 46 retirees at this facility, 28-year-old Roger is the only one who still lives alone. Born in captivity, and raised all his life around human beings, he still prefers human company to that of his fellow chimps. Roger's World unfolds over the course of Siebert's last night with Roger. They sit together, a chimpanzee and a man, two beings separated by no more than some metal bars and a few strands of DNA; each of them trying, in a sense, to get past himself in order to get at the other's essence. Within this account, Siebert tells a larger story: the tales of his travels in Africa - where he encountered, among other things, elephants suffering from a collective nervous breakdown, and some of the last remaining chimps in the wild - and his travels in the US through the dark heart of captive chimpdom. Siebert met chimpanzees everywhere in the course of his civil safari: chimps in research labs and roadside zoos; chimps injected with everything from HIV to hepatitis for drug tests; and chimps that have been strapped to everything from high-speed centrifuges and crash sleds for space flight and seat-belt tests. In the end, Siebert's vigil with Roger leads to a number of moving revelations - not only about Roger and himself, but about the fraught moment that we humans have arrived at in our relationship with our fellow creatures. Roger's World suggests a new and positive way for human beings to see our fellow creatures, and to see ourselves in relation to them.

With more than two million members and supporters, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the world's largest animal-rights organization, and its founder and president, Ingrid Newkirk, is one of the most well-known and most effective activists in America. She has spearheaded worldwide efforts to improve the treatment of animals in manufacturing, entertainment, and elsewhere.

Every day, in laboratories, food factories, and other industries, animals by the millions are subjected to inhumane cruelty. In this accessible guide, Newkirk teaches readers hundreds of simple ways to stop thoughtless animal cruelty and make positive choices.

For each topic, Newkirk provides hard facts, personal insight, inspiration, ideas, and resources, including:

- How to eat healthfully and compassionately

- How to adopt animals rather than support puppy mills

- How to make their vote count and change public opinion

- How to switch to cruelty-free cosmetics and clothing

- How to choose amusements that protect rather than exploit animals.

With public concern for the well-being of animals greater than ever--particularly among young people--this timely, practical book offers exciting and easy ways to make a difference.

Through close readings of Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Buddhist texts, Katherine Wills Perlo proves that our relationship with animals shapes religious doctrine, particularly through the tension between animal exploitation and the bonds of kinship. She pinpoints four different strategies for coping with this conflict. The first is aggression, in which a divinely conferred superiority or karma justifies animal usage. The second is evasion, which emphasizes benevolent aspects of the human-animal relationship within the exploitative structure, such as the image of Jesus as a "good shepherd." The third is defense, which acknowledges the problematic nature of killing, leading many religions to adopt a propitiation mechanism, such as apologizing for sacrifice. And the fourth is effective-defensive, which recognizes animal abuse as inherently unethical.

As humans feel more empathy toward animals, Perlo finds that adherents revise their interpretations of religious texts. Preexisting ontologies, such as Christianity's changing God or Buddhism's principle of impermanence, along with advances in farming practices and technology, also encourage changes in treatment. As cultures begin to appreciate the different types of perception and consciousness experienced by nonhumans, definitions of reality become complicated and humans lean more toward unitary accounts of shared existence. These evolving attitudes exert a crucial influence on religious thought, Perlo argues, moving humans ever closer to a nonspeciesist world.

With humor and compassion, Dr. Nicholas H. Dodman explores the complex emotional problems of troubled animals and their (often) equally distressed owners. If Only They Could Speak has become a classic of animal literature, with stories as wise, and almost as human, as the lives of the animals they portray.

It's hard to imagine eight million people trying to avoid dog refuse on the streets of New York City on a daily basis. Likewise, it's harder not to imagine New Yorkers from all walks of life picking up after their canines. Using plastic bags or trendy, mechanized devices, pet owners have become a unified force in cleaning up the sidewalks of the Big Apple. Not long ago, picking up after your Poodle, Puli, or Pekinese was not a basic, civic duty. Initially, many politicians thought the idea was absurd. Animal rights activists were unanimously opposed. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals condemned the proposed legislation because it would impose undue hardship on dog owners. New York's Poop Scoop Law chronicles the integration of dog owners, a much-maligned subculture, into mainstream society by tracing the history of the legislation that the York's City Council shelved twice before then Mayor Ed Koch was forced to go to the state level for support. Brandow shows how a combination of science and politics, fact and fear, altruism and self-interest led to the adoption and enforcement of legislation that became a shining success. Mayors from around the globe were baffled and wanted to know how pushy and arrogant New Yorkers found the new initiative practical and trendy.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the Horses and Humans Symposium, held in 2000 at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History Powdermill Nature Preserve, in Rector, Pennsylvania, USA, in honor of Mary Aiken Littauer. The four-day symposium brought together 35 academics from Eurasia and America from the disciplines of archaeology, art history, history, paleontology, biology, veterinary medicine, animal husbandry, and other fields for presented papers, round-table discussions, demonstrations and much lively debate in the evenings. The culmination was a one-day public event at the St. Clair Showgrounds called the Celebration of the Horse that involved a wide range of equestrian performances by over 50 horses and riders for a public audience of over 500. In addition to the production of this volume, the symposium introduced many equine scholars to each other and initiated both collaboration and communication amongst this active community.

Go inside the Animal Liberation Front.

Written by former Animal Liberation Front organizer Keith Mann, From Dusk 'til Dawn is a detailed account of the advance of the radical Animal Liberation Movement, from the English hunt saboteurs of the 1960's, to the Animal Liberation Front of the 1970's and 80's, to the focused direct action campaigns of the 1990's. Daring stories of masked liberators spiriting animals from labs in the middle of the night, militant vegans firebombing egg farm trucks, and the dramatic government response.

Fifteen years in the making, From Dusk 'til Dawn was born during Keith Mann's lengthy prison sentence for Animal Liberation Front actions. His escape from custody in 1994 nearly scuppered the project but his determination to document the growth of the animal liberation movement ensured its completion. From Dusk 'til Dawn is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand why people break the law and give their lives to rescue animals from exploitation.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The sapiens of the sea, whales are the other intelligent, social, and loquacious animal. But they seem to swim away the more people chase after them in an effort to communicate and connect. Why does the meaning of their mesmerizing songs continue to elude us? In times of unprecedented environmental and social loss, Whale Song ponders the problems facing ocean ecosystems and offers lessons from those depths for human social life and intimacy. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

This is a compilation of papers devoted to diverse archaeozoological issues. Most of the contributions are based on lectures given at the Seminario Relaciones Hombre-Fauna (Human - Fauna Relationships Seminar) organized by the Laboratorio de Arqueozoologia and sponsored by the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, the Mexican federal agency at charge of preserving the palaeontological, anthropological and historical heritages of the country. Contents: 1) Human and fauna relationships, a look from paleocology to taphonomy (Eduardo Corona-m. and Joaquin Arroyo Cabrales); 2) Paleoecologia y sistematica de los equidos y gonfoterios fosiles de America del Sur (Maria Teresa Alberdi); 3) Perezosos antillanos: extincion y convivencia con aborigenes (Carlos Arredondo); 4) Earliest evidence for human-megafauna interaction in the Americas (Richard A. Farina y Reynaldo Castilla); 5) La complejidad de los sistemas ecologicos en la explicacion del registro arqueofaunistico de los cazadores recolectores de la isla grande de Tierra del Fuego (Sebastian Munoz); 6) Humans and other mammals in Prehispanic Chihuahua (William Merril y Celia Lopez); 7) Revelacion del color de caballos a partir de ADN antiguo y su implicacion en sociedades medievales (Cristina Valdiosera); 8) Human and animal taphonomy in Europe: A physical and chemical point of view (Colin Smith, Miranda Jans, Cristina Nielsen-Marsh and Matthew Collins); 9) One way to understand Mammoths: Lessons from actualistic studies of modern elephants (Gary Haynes); 10) Tafonomia de vertebrados en la Puna Argentina: Atricion y modificaciones oseas por carnivoros (Mariana Mondini); 11) El analisis de excretas desde la Etologia y la Arqueozoologia: el caso del lobo iberico (Isabel Barja y Eduardo Corona-M).

Hailed by critics on both sides of the Atlantic, The Bloodless Revolution is a comprehensive history of vegetarianism, "draw[ing] the different strands of the subject together in a way that has never been done before" (Keith Thomas, author of Man and the Natural World).

"You are about to enter a new genre, that of scientific fables, by which I don't mean science fiction, or false stories about science, but, on the contrary, true ways of understanding how difficult it is to figure out what animals are up to." -Bruno Latour, form the Foreword Is it all right to urinate in front of animals? What does it mean when a monkey throws its feces at you? Do apes really know how to ape? Do animals form same-sex relations? Are they the new celebrities of the twenty-first century? This book poses twenty-six such questions that stretch our preconceived ideas about what animals do, what they think about, and what they want. In a delightful abecedarium of twenty-six chapters, Vinciane Despret argues that behaviors we identify as separating humans from animals do not actually properly belong to humans. She does so by exploring incredible and often funny adventures about animals and their involvements with researchers, farmers, zookeepers, handlers, and other human beings. Do animals have a sense of humor? In reading these stories it is evident that they do seem to take perverse pleasure in creating scenarios that unsettle even the greatest of experts, who in turn devise newer and riskier hypotheses that invariably lead them to conclude that animals are not nearly as dumb as previously thought. These deftly translated accounts oblige us, along the way, to engage in both ethology and philosophy. Combining serious scholarship with humor that will resonate with anyone, this book-with a foreword by noted French philosopher, anthropologist, and sociologist of science Bruno Latour-is a must not only for specialists but also for general readers, including dog owners, who will never look at their canine companions the same way again.

This book gathers, in one place, those measures presently used to study the human-companion animal bond. The measures chosen for inclusion are the most heavily used by researchers, as well as measures that appear to be innovative or relate to the different aspects of the human-companion animal relationship. The measures cover the human-animal bond principally by attachment, but also by fear, abuse, or neglect.

Before "New Age" there was "New Thought," a philosophy that sought God through metaphysics and was wildly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. American mystic and bestselling author RALPH WALDO TRINE (1866-1958) was one of the most influential writers on New Thought principles, and here, in this 1899 book, he explains that how humanity behaves toward its fellow creatures is a measure of our own civility, or lack thereof: . how children learn kindness through the gentle treatment of animals . why fashion-in clothing, in food-cannot dictate our usage of animals . how a society's viewpoint on animals is reflected in its culture . and more. Vegetarians, animal lovers, and those seeking a closer communion with the natural world will find this a stirring work.

The Kennel Club's Breed Standards form the basis for judging dogs at all licensed breed shows. This fully revised edition of the authoritative guide outlines the descriptive 'standards' for each of the 201 pure breeds of dog now recognised by the Kennel Club. The book has been completely updated by a panel of experts to incorporate the latest standards for all breeds in each of the principal categories - Hound, Gundog, Terrier, Utility, Working, Pastoral and Toy. As well as providing a beautiful colour photograph of each dog, each entry contains a history of the breed, including its origins and function, as well as a full description outlining its essential features. There is also useful advice on the nature of each breed and practical information to help guide anyone who is buying a dog, as well as a glossary of canine terms. This book is essential reading for anyone who owns, or hopes to own, a pedigree dog and is indispensable for breeders, judges and those professionally involved with dogs.

Since the 1960s, zoos and aquariums have been repeatedly challenged by animal rights activists, regulatory agencies, anti-tax advocates, and an assortment of litigators. Working through the American Zoological Association, these institutions learned to use the U.S. political system to their advantage and, simultaneously, crafted a more progressive public mission. This original study draws upon interviews, archival sources, Congressional records, court cases, regulatory hearings, media accounts, and the authors' ongoing field research.

A cloud of witnesses in the defense of animals - voices coming from the Church through the ages from the full text of Pope St. Pius V's Condemnation of Bull Fighting to the anti-vivisection writings of Cardinal Manning, Cardinal Gibbons and others. The heart of the book deals with how animals have figured in the lives of the saints. Many excerpts, tales and legends are within given of dozens upon dozens of saints.

Animals obviously cannot have a right of free speech or a right to vote because they lack the relevant capacities. But their right to life and to be free of exploitation is no less fundamental than the corresponding right of humans, writes Julian H. Franklin. This theoretically rigorous book will reassure the committed, help the uncertain to decide, and arm the polemicist.

Franklin examines all the major arguments for animal rights proposed to date and extends the philosophy in new directions. "Animal Rights and Moral Philosophy" begins by considering the utilitarian argument of equal respect for animals advocated by Peter Singer and, even more favorably, the rights approach that has been advanced by Tom Regan. Despite their merits, both are found wanting as theoretical foundations for animal rights. Franklin also examines the ecofeminist argument for an ethics of care and several rationalist arguments before concluding that Kant's categorical imperative can be expanded to form a basis for an ethical system that includes all sentient beings. Franklin also discusses compassion as applied to animals, encompassing Albert Schweitzer's ethics of reverence for life. He concludes his analysis by considering conflicts of rights between animals and humans.

Animal rights sounds like a modern idea, but in fact -- for over three millennia -- philosophers, theologians, and political theorists have grappled with the question of our obligations toward animals. This comprehensive and diverse anthology, the only one of its kind, illuminates the complex evolution of moral thought regarding animals and includes writings from ancient Greece to the present. "Animal Rights" reveals the ways in which a variety of thinkers have addressed such issues as our ethical responsibilities for the welfare of animals, whether animals have rights, and what it means to be human.

The preface by Andrew Linzey dispels many of the misconceptions about the animal rights movement. In light of the growing interest in animal rights, this volume is an indispensable resource for scholars and activists alike.

"Animal Rights" includes writings from Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Hegel, Marx, Kant, Bertrand Russell, John Stuart Mill, Nietzsche, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Peter Singer.

Christians believe that we are called to honor and serve God. Kaufman and Braun assert that moving toward a plant-based diet is a faithful way to serve God, because a plant-based diet helps avoid damage to God's earth, depletion of scarce resources, abuse of God's animals, squandering of food needed by the world's poor and hungry people, and harm to our bodies. This book is a primer for Christian vegetarians. It reviews the religious and secular bases for vegetarianism, and it provides practical advice on activism and on dealing with family and friends.

What does American pragmatism contribute to contemporary debates about human-animal relationships? Does it acknowledge our connections to all living things? Does it bring us closer to an ethical treatment of all animals? What about hunting, vegetarianism, animal experimentation, and the welfare of farm animals? While questions about human relations with animals have been with us for millennia, there has been a marked rise in public awareness about animal issues even McDonald s advertises that they use humanely treated animals as food sources. In Animal Pragmatism, 12 lively and provocative essays address concerns at the intersection of pragmatist philosophy and animal welfare. Topics cover a broad range of issues, including moral consideration of animals, the ethics of animal experimentation, institutional animal care, environmental protection of animal habitat, farm animal welfare, animal communication, and animal morals. Readers who interact with animals, whether as pets or on a plate, will find a robust and fascinating exploration of human-nonhuman relationships.

Contributors are James M. Albrecht, Douglas R. Anderson, Steven Fesmire, Glenn Kuehn, Todd Lekan, Andrew Light, John J. McDermott, Erin McKenna, Phillip McReynolds, Ben Minteer, Matthew Pamental, Paul Thompson, and Jennifer Welchman."

Wildlife preservationist Anthony Marr is no stranger to confrontation and danger. When he went to India for the third time to execute a 10-week tiger-saving expedition, he expected to fight poachers, illegal wood cutters, tiger bone traders, and smugglers. Unexpectedly, he encountered political corruption, organizational deceit, and personal betrayal that turned his world upside-down. This multi-faceted turmoil may have been responsible for the least expected encounter of all. The mysterious Raminothna, who, deep in Tigerland, via a series of thoroughly logical steps, imparted upon him a new model of the Universe called Omniscientific Cosmology, which embraces all of the physical, biological, and social sciences, and shows the optimal human destiny and fate of the Earth. Now, Anthony Marr must fight the battle of his life, one he must lose in order to win.

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."--Genesis 1:24-26

In this crucial passage from the Old Testament, God grants mankind power over animals. But with this privilege comes the grave responsibility to respect life, to treat animals with simple dignity and compassion.

Somewhere along the way, something has gone wrong.

In Dominion, we witness the annual convention of Safari Club International, an organization whose wealthier members will pay up to $20,000 to hunt an elephant, a lion or another animal, either abroad or in American "safari ranches," where the animals are fenced in pens. We attend the annual International Whaling Commission conference, where the skewed politics of the whaling industry come to light, and the focus is on developing more lethal, but not more merciful, methods of harvesting "living marine resources." And we visit a gargantuan American "factory farm," where animals are treated as mere product and raised in conditions of mass confinement, bred for passivity and bulk, inseminated and fed with machines, kept in tightly confined stalls for the entirety of their lives, and slaughtered in a way that maximizes profits and minimizes decency.

Throughout Dominion, Scully counters the hypocritical arguments that attempt to excuse animal abuse: from those who argue that the Bible's message permits mankind to use animals as it pleases, to the hunter's argument that through hunting animal populations are controlled, to the popular and "scientifically proven" notions that animals cannot feel pain, experience no emotions, and are not conscious of their own lives.

The result is eye opening, painful and infuriating, insightful and rewarding. Dominion is a plea for human benevolence and mercy, a scathing attack on those who would dismiss animal activists as mere sentimentalists, and a demand for reform from the government down to the individual. Matthew Scully has created a groundbreaking work, a book of lasting power and importance for all of us.

Animal rights activists today regularly use visual imagery in their efforts to shape the public's understanding of what it means to be "kind," "cruel," and "inhumane" toward animals. Art for Animals explores the early history of this form of advocacy through the images and the people who harnessed their power. Following in the footsteps of earlier-formed organizations like the RSPCA and ASPCA, animal advocacy groups such as the Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection made significant use of visual art in literature and campaign materials. But, enabled by new and improved technologies and techniques, they took the imagery much further than their predecessors did, turning toward vivid, pointed, and at times graphic depictions of human-animal interactions. Keri Cronin explains why the activist community embraced this approach, details how the use of such tools played a critical role in educational and reform movements in the United States, Canada, and England, and traces their impact in public and private spaces. Far from being peripheral illustrations of points articulated in written texts or argued in impassioned speeches, these photographs, prints, paintings, exhibitions, "magic lantern" slides, and films were key components of animal advocacy at the time, both educating the general public and creating a sense of shared identity among the reformers. Uniquely focused on imagery from the early days of the animal rights movement and filled with striking visuals, Art for Animals sheds new light on the history and development of modern animal advocacy.