Beloved Beasts, Michelle Nijhuis
Beloved Beasts, Michelle Nijhuis
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Beloved Beasts
Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction

Author: Michelle Nijhuis

Narrator: Christina Delaine

Unabridged: 10 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/23/2021


Synopsis

In the late nineteenth century, as humans came to realize that our rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving other animal species to extinction, a movement to protect and conserve them was born. In Beloved Beasts, acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the movement's history: from early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today's global effort to defend life on a larger scale.

She describes the vital role of scientists and activists such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson as well as lesser-known figures in conservation history; she reveals the origins of vital organizations like the Audubon Society and the World Wildlife Fund; she explores current efforts to protect species such as the whooping crane and the black rhinoceros; and she confronts the darker side of conservation, long shadowed by racism and colonialism.

As the destruction of other species continues and the effects of climate change escalate, Beloved Beasts charts the ways conservation is becoming a movement for the protection of all species—including our own.

About Michelle Nijhuis

Michelle Nijhuis is a project editor at the Atlantic, a contributing editor at High Country News, and an award-winning reporter whose work has been published in National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine. She is coeditor of The Science Writers' Handbook and lives in White Salmon, Washington.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Britta

Fantastic read!......more

Goodreads review by Sara

At first, I didn't really like this book. Its format is a little different from most nonfiction books I read. It leans more heavily into the narratives and it's organized about 30 pages per chapter. On the longer side for each story. As I pushed myself to read it though, I started to enjoy it more.......more

Goodreads review by Ben

Honored to have blurbed this forthcoming book; here's what I wrote: Beloved Beasts is the definitive history of the conservation movement, in all its turbulent, passionate, problematic glory. Michelle Nijhuis shines a bright and unsparing light on environmentalism’s most influential hidden figures, a......more

I really enjoyed this audiobook that gives a general history of environmental biology, and how we are affecting the bio-makeup of the whole world. I really liked learning about how a politician set up where certain non-human things have rights, like the ocean, forests, etc. and can have a lawyer sta......more