Zoologies

Zoologies
Zoologies (back cover)
Nonfiction

Zoologies

On Animals and the Human Spirit
“A heart this wise gives me hope for my own species.”
—ALAN WEISMAN
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They have been everything from our food to our clothing, existing alternately as our adversaries, companions, jokes, or gods. And yet animals are leaving the world—both as physical beings and as symbols. In Zoologies, Alison Hawthorne Deming seeks to answer a vital question: What does the disappearance of animals mean for human imagination?

With a mixture of humor, reverence, and curiosity, Deming paints a vivid portrait of the world that made us, and the wisdom we are losing as so many of its creatures fade away. Ranging from the Serengeti to Madrid to her own backyard, she considers what a pack of hyenas can teach us about human bloodlust, how the work of leafcutter ants complicates human art-making, and what elephants can tell us about the deep reverberations of peace and war in our communities. The resulting insights are as surprising as they are inspiring, unveiling an entirely new dimension to the great extinction currently unfolding around the earth.

Keywords: 
art, behavior, biology, cats, conservation, cultural, culture, dogs, domesticated, domestication, endangered, environmental, essays, evolution, extinction, farm, horses, livestock, meat, mythical, Nature, pets, philosophy, prehistoric, protecting, psychology, species, spiritual, wild, wildlife, zoology
ISBN:
9781571313485
Publish Date: 
10/14/2014
Pages: 
272
Size: 
5.5 × 8.5 × 0.63 in
Weight: 
12.6 oz
Author
Alison Hawthorne Deming

Alison Hawthorne Deming is the author of numerous works of nonfiction and poetry, most recently Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit and the collections of poems Stairway to Heaven and Death Valley: Painted Light. She is currently the Agnese Nelms Haury Chair of Environment and Social Justice and Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Arizona.

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Alison Hawthorne Deming – 06/08/2017

Does a book seem small in influence compared to the monstrous forces of mean-spirited avarice that shadow our public life...