Overview

As people come to understand more about animals' inner lives we feel a growing compassion, a desire to better their lives. But how do we translate this compassion into helping other creatures, both those that are and are not our pets? Bringing together the latest science with heartfelt storytelling, Animals' Best Friends reveals the opportunities we have in everyday life to help animals in our homes, in the wild, in zoos, and in science labs, as well as those considered to be food. Barbara J. King, an expert on animal cognition and emotion, guides us on a journey both animal and deeply human. We meet cows living relaxed lives in an animal sanctuary--and cows with plastic portals in their sides at a university research station. We observe bison free-roaming at Yellowstone National Park and chimpanzees confined to zoos. We reflect on animal testing as King shares her own experience as the survivor of a particularly nasty cancer. This is a book not of shaming and limitation, but of uplift and expansion. Though an animal expert, she is just like the rest of us: on a journey still, learning each day how to be better, and do better, for animals. By turning compassion into action on behalf of animals, we not only improve animals' lives--we also immeasurably enrich our own.

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Reviews

[An] enormous pleasure...King's book takes up the question of how and why to engage in compassionate actions that help animals. -- Psychology Today [A] manifesto for how...we can change how we interact with animals and make things better for them--and improve our own lives along the way. -- Forbes A guiding light...to caring people everywhere who hope to bring the power of human empathy to the choices we make that affect animals' lives. -- Sy Montgomery, New York Times bestselling author King believes that people learn best from stories, and she tells them well...[about her] journey of psychological and moral growth. -- American Scientist King describes her own moral dilemmas and the personal solutions she has found, always with love and respect shining through. This book will help its readers articulate their own attitudes. -- Frans de Waal, New York Times bestselling author King's eloquently told stories all lead to the same conclusion: We cannot simply turn away. -- Animal Welfare Institute Quarterly Stunning...Required reading for anyone who wants to better understand the complexities and contradictions of our interactions with animals. -- Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach Trilogy The most comprehensive exploration I've read of the complex relationship between the human and nonhuman, full of great insights and practical information. -- New York Times Book Review

Author Information

Barbara J. King taught anthropology at the College of William and Mary for twenty-eight years and retired early to become a science writer and public speaker. Her work has been featured at Scientific American, Aeon, Undark, Sapiens, NPR, the BBC, Times Literary Supplement, the World Science Festival, and the annual TED conference in Vancouver. Karen Grey is the pen name for award-winning narrator Karen White. A stage, screen, and radio drama actor in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles in the late twentieth century, she started recording books in 1999. Now back in her home state of North Carolina, she shares a home with her family and (probably) too many pets, where she continues to narrate audiobooks as well as make up stories.

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