Black Beauty
Why this book?
I particularly recommend Guest’s edition of the novel, which includes several appendices of fascinating historical background materials.
Like just about everyone, I was taught in childhood that we should think of others and help others. But then we start to hear different messages: “it’s naïve to think you can make the world a better place,” “you’re better off trying to help yourself—don’t waste your time with misguided attempts to help others,” "it’s sanctimonious to be a do-gooder,” and on and on it goes. The fact is, we can help to make the world a better place (without being sanctimonious). And we all should. We can volunteer, donate to good causes, eat less meat (or no meat at all), fly and drive less (or not at all!). And, as these authors have shown, the books we write can also make a real contribution.
Animals is set in an indeterminate future in which virtually all the species that humans have for millennia used as food have become extinct; the world it creates is at once eerily foreign and disturbingly familiar.
“As gripping as it is important, LePan's brilliant novel tackles the largest moral issue of our time.” -Jonathan Balcombe, author of Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals
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I particularly recommend Guest’s edition of the novel, which includes several appendices of fascinating historical background materials.
Gaskell wrote this novel at a time when workers and their families in Britain’s industrial cities labored under intolerable conditions, and it was all too common for their suffering “to pass unregarded by all but the sufferers,” as Gaskell puts it in her preface. Her aim in writing the novel was to bring their plight to the attention of those better off—and to engender sympathy for their plight in the hearts and minds of readers. In the first half of the novel, she succeeds completely; it would be impossible for any reader to remain unmoved while reading of the lives of the Wilson family and the Barton family. The second half of the novel succeeds less fully, but the first half remains as powerful a piece of writing as I have ever read.
Few books have had as great an impact on how humans think of our fellow creatures as has Singer’s Animal Liberation. In exploring the ways in which humans treat other animals—including, with utter honesty, the ways in which we have treated the animals that we intend to consume—Singer’s aim was to stir “emotions of outrage and anger, coupled with a determination to do something about the practices described,” as he writes in the preface to the book. To my great shame, I confess that, for some years after I read the book in the early 1990s, I resisted the impulse to “do something about the practices described.” But the message stuck with me and kept nagging away; finally, some four or five years later, I began to speak out against factory farming—and to change my diet.
This is a simply but eloquently written book. It’s the story of what happens to a boy who suffers from—and is forced to participate in—the horrors of an extended civil war in Sierra Leone, and of his survival and eventual rehabilitation. It is a wrenching book to read—and yet in the end it’s a heartwarming and inspiring book too, not least of all because Beah so clearly has a warm heart himself. If you read the book, it’s hard not to feel that we should all be doing more to help those to whom Life deals the worst hands. Beah himself continues to be an inspiration: “I’ve dedicated my life,” he says, to try to “make sure that what happened to me doesn’t continue to happen to other children around the world.”
5,215 authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about poverty, Manchester England, and horses.
We think you will like For the Prevention of Cruelty: The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United States, The Grass Library, and Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries about Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion if you like this list.
From David's list on The best books for serious thinkers about cats and dogs.
For those who want to learn more about the meaning and history of animal rights, this is one of the most informative books I’ve read on the rise of the American animal welfare and animal rights movements. Even if you don’t agree with everything in these pages, you’ll come away with a new appreciation of the struggles to protect dogs, cats, and other animals in our modern society.
From Jessica's list on The best books that made me think differently about human-animal relationships.
Brooks’ collection of essays is a vivid example of how to talk without rancor or judgmentalism about the painful failings of humans in their treatment of other animals. He writes “small,” focusing on everyday interactions with animals on his farm and in his neighborhood, and through his narratives touches on and helps nurture a well of empathy.
From Robin's list on The best books to learn about women human rights visionaries.
Slavery used to be the economic engine of the Americas. Only a few could clearly see that keeping other humans in bondage was a horrible crime. Ingrid Newkirk has a similar clarity of vision when it comes to animal rights. I believe that in the future, most of us look back with horror at industrial husbandry and the use of hormones to cultivate ever larger beasts for the slaughterhouse. You may not entirely agree with Newkirk, but you have to take her seriously. She’s also a genius at publicizing her cause of animal rights, helping to popularize veganism and the banning of fur and leather products as well as many kinds of animal research.