"A remarkable combination of biology, genetics, zoology, evolutionary psychology and philosophy." --Richard Powers, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory "A brilliant, thought-provoking book."&nbsp;--Matt Haig, New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library &nbsp; A wide-ranging take on why humans have a troubled relationship with being an animal, and why we need a better one Human are the most inquisitive, emotional, imaginative, aggressive, and baffling animals on the planet. But we are also an animal that does not think it is an animal. How well do we really know ourselves? How to Be Animal tells a remarkable story of what it means to be human and argues that at the heart of our existence is a profound struggle with being animal. We possess a psychology that seeks separation between humanity and the rest of nature, and we have invented grand ideologies to magnify this. As well as piecing together the mystery of how this mindset evolved, Challenger's book examines the wide-reaching ways in which it affects our lives, from our politics to the way we distance ourselves from other species. We travel from the origin of homo sapiens through the agrarian and industrial revolutions, the age of the internet, and on to the futures of AI and human-machine interface. Challenger examines how technology influences our sense of our own animal nature and our relationship with other species with whom we share this fragile planet. That we are separated from our own animality is a delusion, according to Challenger. Blending nature writing, history, and moral philosophy, How to Be Animal is both a fascinating reappraisal of what it means to be human, and a robust defense of what it means to be an animal.

How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human

Politics & Social Sciences

Challenger, Melanie

Anthropology

Penguin??Books

Realizing the link between her own estrangement from nature and the cultural shifts that led to a dramatic rise in extinctions, award-winning writer Melanie Challenger travels in search of the stories behind these losses. From an exploration of an abandoned mine in England to an Antarctic sea voyage to South Georgia's old whaling stations, from a sojourn in South America to a stay among an Inuit community in Canada, she uncovers species, cultures, and industries touched by extinction. Accompanying her on this journey are the thoughts of anthropologists, biologists, and philosophers who have come before her. Drawing on their words as well as firsthand witness and ancestral memory, Challenger traces the mindset that led to our destructiveness and proposes a path of redemption rooted in our emotional responses. This sobering yet illuminating book looks beyond natural devastation to examine why” and what's next.”

On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature

Counterpoint

Review\n"On Extinction is a strange hybrid of travelogue and natural science, misted over with a wanderer's lonesome observations of a world in the process of disappearing . . . Amid this solid research, there is fine and truly poetic prose." —The New York Times Book Review\n"A deep look at the human capacity for extinction twined with roamings to the far ends of the earth, from poet and fledgling natural historian Challenger . . . She has a rangy curiosity that extends well past ignorance and alienation as the sole agents of the man-made extinction . . . A formidable inquiry into why the marvels of nature and the distinctiveness of cultures are constantly imperiled."—Kirkus Reviews\n"Erudite and impassioned, Melanie Challenger's On Extinction is a ruminative examination on the way our 21st century world is changing quickly . . . A timely and important book, On Extinction will make you think, one of the finest things a book can do." —The Dallas Morning News\n"[Challenger] has a keen awareness of how the past is layered beneath the present, and how transient both natural and human systems are... [On Extinction] lets the reader observe a creative and intelligent mind at work on problems that face all of us." —Columbus Dispatch\nRealizing the link between her own estrangement from nature and the cultural shifts that led to a dramatic rise in extinctions, award-winning writer Melanie Challenger travels in search of the stories behind these losses. From an exploration of an abandoned mine in England to an Antarctic sea voyage to South Georgia's old whaling stations, from a sojourn in South America to a stay among an Inuit community in Canada, she uncovers species, cultures, and industries touched by extinction. Accompanying her on this journey are the thoughts of anthropologists, biologists, and philosophers who have come before her. Drawing on their words as well as firsthand witness and ancestral memory, Challenger traces the mindset that led to our destructiveness and proposes a path of redemption rooted in our emotional responses. This sobering yet illuminating book looks beyond natural devastation to examine why and what's next.

Counterpoint LLC

How To Be Animal

CANONGATE BOOKS *

Humans are the most inquisitive, emotional, imaginative, aggressive and baffling animals on the planet. But how well do we really know ourselves?\nHow to Be Animal offers a radical take on what it means to be human and argues that at the heart of our psychology is a profound struggle with being animal. Tracing the history of this thinking through to its far-reaching effects on our lives, and drawing on a range of disciplines, Challenger proposes that being an animal is a process, beautiful and unpredictable, and that we have a chance to tell ourselves a new story; to realise that if we matter, so does everything else.

How to Be Animal: What it Means to Be Human

In Galatea, her first collection, Challenger casts a poet's sensitive eye across the hours of a tumultuous century to create startling poems whose voice - resolute, compassionate, original - both celebrates and mourns the tensions of human nature. Drawing her themes from the Pygmalion myth, Challenger portrays her subjects in trembling poise between action and inaction, consummation and defeat.

Galatea

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Salt Publishing

The destruction of nature as a consequence of modern human lifestyles, industries and agriculture is leading to the Earth's sixth great extinction of species. Current estimates suggest that the rate of extinction is now thousands of times that counted in the fossil record before the emergence of modern man. At the same time, human societies themselves are in a cultural extinction crisis, with experts anticipating that of the world's nearly seven thousand languages as few as ten percent may survive into the next century.  Melanie Challenger's extraordinary book is an exploration of how we might live to resist these extinctions and why such disappearances must be of concern to us. Adventurous, curious and passionate about her subject, Challenger takes us on a very personal journey as she tries to restore her own relationship with nature. The narrative unfolds through a series of landscapes haunted by extinction. From the ruined tin mines of Cornwall and the abandoned whaling stations of South Georgia to the Inuit camps of the Arctic and the white heart of Antarctica, she probes the critical relationship between human activities and environmental collapse. This is the first book to weave together the strands of cultural, biological and industrial extinctions into a meditation on the way we live beside nature in the modern world.

Science & Math

Mathematics

Granta Books

Paroles d'enfants dans la guerre - journaux intimes d'enfants et de jeunes gens 1914-2004

History

FILIPOVIC, ZLATA

World

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Challenger, Melanie. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Challenger, Melanie