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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 writer and editor Michelle Nijhuis traces the movement's history: from early battles to save charismatic species such as the 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, reveals the origins of organizations like the Audubon Society and the World Wildlife Fund, explores current efforts to protect species such as the whooping crane and the black rhinoceros, and confronts the darker side of conservation, long shadowed by racism and colonialism. Now, as the destruction of other species continues and the effects of climate change escalate, conservation is becoming a movement for the protection of all species – including our own.
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.
– One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2021
"From the origin of the concept of species through the CRISPR revolution, Beloved Beasts is at once thoughtful and thought-provoking – a crucial addition to the literature of our troubled time."
– Elizabeth Kolbert
"If 'attention is prayer,' as Simone Weil suggests, then Michelle Nijhuis's carefully observed Beloved Beasts is a benediction bestowed not so much upon the men and women who carry out the work of species conservation but upon the very act of living in conversation with the more-than-human world."
– Elizabeth Rush
"An engrossing history of conservation and its accomplishments [...] Compassionate yet realistic and candid throughout, Nijhuis makes a significant contribution to the literature on environmentalism."
– Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Nijhuis's comprehensive survey is sure to delight nature enthusiasts and those concerned with disappearing species."
– Publishers Weekly
"In a bravura turn, Michelle Nijhuis shapes three hundred years of conservation history into one riveting tale. Beloved Beasts brims with surprise, compelling characters, and opportunities for introspection about the motley human effort to catalogue, celebrate, and protect the other inhabitants of our planet."
– Elena Passarello
"Michelle Nijhuis has written a book that is both a beautiful, wise history and a measured call to action. By remembering the messy, bighearted, sometimes nearsighted, but ultimately hopeful efforts of those before us, we can be smarter as we embark on the profoundly human project of saving species other than our own."
– Florence Williams
"Beloved Beasts is the definitive history of the conservation movement, in all its turbulent, passionate, problematic glory. It shines a bright and unsparing light on environmentalism's most influential hidden figures, and breathes new life into Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and other heroes you thought you knew. The centuries-long campaign to protect our fellow creatures finally has the literary epic it deserves."
– Ben Goldfarb
"What a lovely, timely book. Michelle Nijhuis's deeply mined research and wholehearted compassion for her subjects – human and animal alike – are evident on every page."
– John Vaillant
"[A] defining and invaluable chronicle of an increasingly urgent lifesaving effort."
– Booklist (starred review)
