Animate

Reviews / Votes

Compelling . . . [an] enchanting and disturbing history of the human animal * New Scientist * Compelling . . . absorbing . . . excellent -- Country Life A rich blend of psychology, anthropology and sociology . . . Offers a timely reminder that humans, similarly to all other animals, are embedded in and dependent on the natural world' * Nature * In this beautiful biography of humans' evolution with animals Michael Bond explores how we can resolve our recent messy divorce from nature and 'reanimate' ourselves, returning to a place where we can learn, judge and find ourselves through the way we relate to the animal world. Full of wonders and insights, awash with compassion and self-reflection, Animate is an astonishing adventure into our own psychology expressed through our relationship with animals -- Isabella Tree, author of <i>Wilding</i> 'It's hard to know where we end and our dog begins. The same is true, if we could only see it, for humans and non-humans generally. By letting us eavesdrop on the conversation between us and the wild, Bond, in this thrilling, effortlessly readable book, helps us to see - and so to know our own shape and nature. Essential, transformative stuff -- Charles Foster, author of <i>The Edges of the World</i> In this beautifully written, wide-ranging, and impeccably researched book, Michael Bond carefully traces how we, humans, arrived at where we are today, disconnected from wild animals and their homes and wrongly thinking of ourselves as superior to other animals and separate from and above them. This humancentric arrogance is driven by indifference and the fear of seeing ourselves in other animals resulting in an era called the Anthropocene, often called "the age of humanity," when, in fact, it's more appropriately called "the rage of inhumanity.'" Bond aptly and correctly concludes, without other animals, "we can hardly be human." Animate will make you rethink who they (other animals) truly are and who we truly are, and we can only hope it will result in people changing their speciesist abusive ways of interacting with our animal kin with whom we actually share a large number of traits -- Marc Bekoff, author of <i>The Emotional Lives of Animals</i> I loved Animate. Michael Bond writes with such wonderful empathy and curiosity, and Animate makes the reader see the world - and humanity's place in it - in a completely different light -- Tabitha Stanmore, author of <i>Cunning Folk</i> In his robust raspberry to human exceptionalism, Michael Bond shows that the lengths to which people have gone to justify our exalted estate only point up our close relationship with the animals with whom we share this planet -- Henry Gee, author of <i>The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire</i>