Interview with Keggie Carew, author of Beastly: A New History of Animals and Us
Keggie Carew, author of Beastly: A New History of Animals and Us recommends a lovely collection of books! Before jumping into the interview, please check out Keggie's book:
Description from Bookshop.org: (All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Beastly: A New History of Animals and Us
BEASTLY is shortlisted for the 2023 Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation.
Beastly is the 40,000-year story of our changing kinship with the animal world - from the smallest microbe to the largest creature that ever lived. Exploring this relationship through history, culture, ecology, science and inspiring examples, Carew makes the passionate case that animals are the key to the planet’s health, but only if we can save them.
In Beastly, author Keggie Carew seeks to re-enchant readers with the wild world, reframing our understanding of what it is like to be an animal and what our role is as humans. She throws readers headlong into the mind-blowing, heart-thumping, glittering pageant of life, and goes in search of our most revealing encounters with the animal world throughout the centuries. How did we domesticate animals and why did we choose sheep, goats, cows, pigs, horses, and chickens? What does it mean when a gorilla tells a joke or a fish thinks? Why does a wren sing? Beastly is a gorgeously written, deeply researched, and intensely felt journey into the splendor, mystery, and genius of animals and the long, complicated story of our interactions with them as humans.
Buy On:
Easons €22.39
Bookshop.org UK £19.00
Bookshop.org US $26.04
Blackwells £20.00
Waterstones £20.00
Wordery $24.69
Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life by Edward O. Wilson. Description from Bookshop.org: (All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
From the great late E.O.Wilson, his proposal to save us from the environmental catastrophe of mass extinctions by safeguarding some vital regions around the globe - which he identifies - for nature to thrive. Wilson believed that the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats is the folly that our descendants are least likely to forgive. I agree!
Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life
History is not a prerogative of the human species, Edward O. Wilson declares in Half-Earth. Demonstrating that we blindly ignore the histories of millions of other species, Wilson warns us that a point of no return is imminent. Refusing to believe that our extinction is predetermined, Wilson has written Half-Earth as a cri de coeur, proposing that the only solution to our impending “Sixth Extinction” is to increase the area of natural reserves to half the surface of the earth. Half-Earth is a resounding conclusion to the best-selling trilogy begun by the “splendid” (Financial Times) The Social Conquest of Earth and “engaging and highly readable” (Times Higher Education) The Meaning of Human Existence.
Buy On:
Easons €26.59
Bookshop.org UK £12.99
Bookshop.org US $15.76
Blackwells £20.99
Waterstones £12.99
Wordery $25.91
Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
The Brilliant Abyss: True Tales of Exploring the Deep Sea, Discovering Hidden Life and Selling the Seabed by Helen Scales. Description from Bookshop.org: (All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Scales is both a brilliant scientist and a brilliant writer. She dives deep to paint a fascinating and vivid world of creatures we little know. It is utterly riveting, fascination, and astonishing in equal measure. This is an urgent book which I urge everyone to read.
The Brilliant Abyss: True Tales of Exploring the Deep Sea, Discovering Hidden Life and Selling the Seabed
The deep sea is the last, vast wilderness on the planet. This is the story of how we imagine, explore and exploit it. For centuries, myth-makers and storytellers have concocted imaginary monsters of the deep, and now scientists are looking there to find bizarre, unknown species, chemicals to make new medicines, and to gain a greater understanding of how this world of ours works. With an average depth of 12,000 feet and chasms that plunge much deeper, it forms a frontier for new discoveries.
The Brilliant Abyss tells the story of our relationship with the deep sea – how we imagine, explore and exploit it. It captures the golden age of discovery we are currently in and looks back at the history of how we got here, while also looking forward to the unfolding new environmental disasters that are taking place miles beneath the waves, far beyond the public gaze.
Throughout history, there have been two distinct groups of deep-sea explorers. Both have sought knowledge but with different and often conflicting ambitions in mind. Some people want to quench their curiosity; many more have been lured by the possibilities of commerce and profit. The tension between these two opposing sides is the theme that runs throughout the book, while readers are taken on a chronological journey through humanity’s developing relationship with the deep sea. The Brilliant Abyss ends by looking forwards to humanity’s advancing impacts on the deep, including mining and pollution and what we can do about them.
Buy On:
Easons €12.32
Bookshop.org UK £10.44
Bookshop.org US $15.81
Blackwells £10.18
Waterstones £10.99
Wordery $13.57
Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Description from Bookshop.org: (All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
The most difficult question of all! I’m going to choose The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. BUT I’m going to cheat and name the books that I cannot forsake: Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne with Ernest Shepherd’s illustrations; Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame; The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Anderson and Brothers Grimm; The Narnia Tales by C.S. Lewis; Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien; Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach; Ethel and Ernest by the great Raymond Briggs. All, works of genius.
The Little Prince
A wise and enchanting fable that, in teaching the secret of what is really important in life, has changed the world forever for its readers.
Often seen as a symbol of childhood innocence, Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s best-selling book The Little Prince is cherished by children and adults alike across the globe. Ideal for children aged 7 and up.
This beautiful new anniversary edition contains the definitive translation by Katherine Woods and all the original illustrations. The Little Prince joins the ranks of A Little Princess, The Secret Garden & Peter Pan as a genuine children's classic of the twentieth century.
Antoine De Saint-Exupéry was born in 1900 in Lyon. In 1921, he began his training as a pilot By 1926, he had became one of the pioneers of international postal flight. In 1935 he embarked on a record-breaking attempt to fly from Paris to Saigon. Nineteen hours into the flight, his plane crashed in the Sahara desert. He survived the crash but spent three days battling dehydration, limited food and hallucinations. On the fourth day, the was rescued. In part, this experience was the inspiration for The Little Prince. He continued to fly until World War II, during which he took self-imposed exile. On 31 July 1944, he disappeared over the Mediterranean while flying a reconnaissance mission.
Buy On:
Easons €14.39
Bookshop.org UK £12.34
Bookshop.org US $18.60
Blackwells £12.99
Waterstones £12.99
Wordery $16.04
Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
Paper, because I underline and write all over the books I like, and often return to them.
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
Little Toller
Little Toller in Beaminster is also a brilliant publisher; and the brilliant Folde Dorset in Shaftesbury specialises in books about nature and the natural world.
Many thanks to Keggie for recommending a lovely collection of books! Please don't forget to check out Beastly: A New History of Animals and Us.
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Canongate Books (Beastly: A New History of Animals and Us), WW Norton & Co (Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life), Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (The Brilliant Abyss: True Tales of Exploring the Deep Sea, Discovering Hidden Life and Selling the Seabed), HarperCollins Publishers (The Little Prince).
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