100 books like The Solutionary Way

Scully's tour de force investigates the state of humanity's relationship with animals through a Scriptural lens, exploring the multifaceted concept of "dominion" from the Biblical creation story as he takes on industrial farmers, trophy hunters, and others who gain fame and fortune on the backs of suffering nonhuman creatures.

I continue to be moved by the author's courage in using his voice as a well-known Republican speechwriter to dismantle the notion that compassion for animals is a "liberal" cause. His immersive research into the full range of manifestations of animal cruelty makes this one of the most shocking and compelling texts I have read on the subject of our treatment of other beings. 

This classic by the vegan ecofeminist writer and activist opened my eyes to the ways in which language is used to cover or erase real animal lives. I appreciate her relatable examples as she calls out both the tendency to dismiss caring for animals as a childish concern and the systematic desensitization of children to the consumption of meat.

Prior to discovering this book, I had never reflected on the interconnectedness of animal cruelty and gendered violence against human victims, but Adams led me to think much more deeply about representations of female farmed animals in children's stories, advertising, and popular culture in general. 

Melson's highly original work has been a towering influence on my thinking about how children, who naturally gravitate to animals, learn to repress this deep connection as they grow into adults, oblivious (or resigned) to the systems implicated in the production of meat and other animal products.

I appreciate her detailed study of the process that brings about this "shift" and how it manifests as an explosion of animal-themed toys, games, films, and other cultural products, even as contact with real animals is all but lost to today's young people.

As a former 4-H kid, I especially respect and relate to her sober analysis of the "rite of passage" of raising and having a personal relationship with an animal whose purpose is to be sold and turned into food. 

I admire how Torres traces his own process of awakening to the realities of industrial farming, from the happy farm life he had been led to imagine to the brutal exploitation that makes animals themselves and their products into commodities for human consumption. His account is both deeply personal and unflinching in its uncovering of the hidden production methods that most of us would prefer not to see.

My Marxian-inflected approach to seeing animals both as products and as their own laboring class was heavily influenced by this powerful book and its focus on lived experiences that are the polar opposite of what children's books typically portray. 

Anderson examines how domestic animals played into English colonization of the Chesapeake and New England in the seventeenth century.

She shows how the English conceptions of the natural world, which clashed with Native American visions, directed their territorial expansion. At the same time, the new environment transformed the English methods of livestock husbandry.

I learned from this book how to discern the role of animals in even the most commonplace legal arrangements. For example, legislation related to damages done by free-ranged cattle raised fundamental questions about the ownership of nature.  

Many goat owners don’t have easy access to a veterinarian or veterinary medicines or just want to raise their goats naturally. This down-to-earth book suggests natural methods to keep goats healthy.

The author discusses various minerals and the types of problems that can be caused when a goat has a deficiency, even offering a checklist of diseases that can indicate such a deficiency. Its biggest strength is that it offers various ways to ensure that your goats stay in optimum condition, avoiding medical or pharmaceutical treatments. 

The photography in this book is so gorgeous you can just imagine yourself on a sunny smallholding or homestead, tending your crops and looking after your livestock. The instructions are clear and concise from someone who lives the good life. It certainly encouraged me to have a go at various aspects of self-sufficiency that other books didn’t. A great book to dream over while you plan your future.

This first book in Kelle Riley’s new series has it all—a plot full of twists and turns, a super-smart sleuth, and just a smidge of romance. I love that the sleuth doesn't act impulsively and instead observes and deduces. In addition, there are yummy recipes, a cranky rescue cat, and several quirky secondary characters. I especially like the couple who own a dog bakery and their trained dog that discourages the goose population.

Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation is usually taken to be the founding philosophical text for the animal rights movement, but I think Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights presents the more compelling, more multi-dimensional argument.

Where Singer grounds moral standing in the fundamental interest in avoiding suffering, Regan foregrounds the “inherent value” of being the “experiencing subject of a life,” for whom avoiding suffering is only part of the question.

There’s plenty of disagreement about whether the rights framework is the best way to think about our moral duties to animals (cf. Derrida above). And Regan’s position is available in less rigorous and scholarly form in some of his other books. But for the full walk-through of the best argument for animal rights, this is the text.

To properly understand dehumanization—which represents human beings as subhuman creatures—it is important to recognize our less-than-humane relations with other animals.  In this compact, vividly-written book, Marjorie Spiegel powerfully juxtaposes the oppressive and cruel treatment of enslaved people with the terrible treatment of nonhuman animals. The book is largely concerned with the dehumanization of enslaved Africans and their descendants, but it is also pertinent to other episodes of racial dehumanization.