Between Light and Storm: How We Live with Other Species

Woolfson (Field Notes from a Hidden City) examines humanity’s relationship with animals in this bracing investigation. In tracing “the development of the philosophical and religious ideas that have formed our views and how we’ve seen, described and portrayed other species,” she considers animal breeding and their use as food, which are “closely related to the way we look at our own species and the extent to which we give ourselves the privileges apparently bestowed by history and by God,” as well as their role as subjects of experiments. Elsewhere, Woolfson examines how “tradition” is used “to justify some of the most outrageous, discredited and damaging human behaviour,” specifically the “persecution, the killing and infliction of suffering” on large numbers of animals. (Her chapter on the cruelties in the fur trade is especially harrowing.) Throughout, the descriptions can be brutal, but they are balanced with passages of beauty: “Red kites hunt above me... their feathers changed in an instant to flashes of copper taffeta, light as fragments of fine silk blown by the wind.” It adds up to a fascinating look at how and why humans “consider ourselves superior” to other beings who live on the planet. With gorgeous writing and well-considered insight, this is a must for nature-minded readers. Agent: Jenny Brown, Jenny Brown Assoc. (Dec.)