Book picks similar to
Until Every Animal is Free by Saryta Rodriguez


animal-liberation
animal-rights
non-fiction-world-animal-rights
non-fiction

How to Create a Vegan World: A Pragmatic Approach


Tobias Leenaert - 2017
    He argues that, given our present situation, with entire societies dependent on using animals, we need a very pragmatic approach. How to Create a Vegan World contains many valuable ideas and insights for both budding advocates for animals and seasoned activists, organizational leaders, and even entrepreneurs.

Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight


Timothy Pachirat - 2011
    The author, political scientist Timothy Pachirat, was employed undercover for five months in a Great Plains slaughterhouse where 2,500 cattle were killed per day—one every twelve seconds. Working in the cooler as a liver hanger, in the chutes as a cattle driver, and on the kill floor as a food-safety quality-control worker, Pachirat experienced firsthand the realities of the work of killing in modern society. He uses those experiences to explore not only the slaughter industry but also how, as a society, we facilitate violent labor and hide away that which is too repugnant to contemplate.Through his vivid narrative and ethnographic approach, Pachirat brings to life massive, routine killing from the perspective of those who take part in it. He shows how surveillance and sequestration operate within the slaughterhouse and in its interactions with the community at large. He also considers how society is organized to distance and hide uncomfortable realities from view. With much to say about issues ranging from the sociology of violence and modern food production to animal rights and welfare, Every Twelve Seconds is an important and disturbing work.

A Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical, and Evolutionary Imperative to Treat All Beings with Compassion


Matthieu Ricard - 2014
    Every chicken just wants to be free. Every bear, dog, or mouse experiences sorrow and feels pain as intensely as any of us humans do. In a compelling appeal to reason and human kindness, Matthieu Ricard here takes the arguments from his best-sellers Altruism and Happiness to their logical conclusion: that compassion toward all beings, including our fellow animals, is a moral obligation and the direction toward which any enlightened society must aspire. He chronicles the appalling sufferings of the animals we eat, wear, and use for adornment or "entertainment," and submits every traditional justification for their exploitation to scientific evidence and moral scrutiny. What arises is an unambiguous and powerful ethical imperative for treating all of the animals with whom we share this planet with respect and compassion.

Grilled: Turning Adversaries into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry


Leah Garcés - 2019
    As President of the nonprofit group Mercy for Animals and former US Executive Director of Compassion in World Farming, she has led the fight against the sprawling chicken industry that raises billions of birds in cruel conditions--all to satisfy the American appetite for meat.Grilled: Turning Adversaries into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry is her story of working alongside the food and farming industry for animal welfare and ethical food. Instead of fighting and protesting and shaming--approaches that simply haven't worked previously--Garcés has instead gotten to know the producers. She has worked alongside owners of the megafarms, befriending them, having frank conversations with them, and ultimately encouraging change through dialogue and discussion. Leah is changing the way America farms her animals through this bold approach, and is helping to directly improve the lives of millions of farmed animals.When she started her journey, Leah did not have much empathy to spare for the chicken-contract farmer--until she actually met one and tried to understand the difficulties they faced. This is the story of what happens when we cross enemy lines to look for solutions. It's a story of giving in to discomfort for the sake of progress. It's a story of the power of human connection, and what happens when we practice empathy toward our enemies.

The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony


Will Tuttle - 2004
    By eating the plants and animals of our earth, we literally incorporate them. It is also through this act of eating that we partake of our culture's values and paradigms at the most primal levels. It is becoming increasingly obvious, however, that the choices we make about our food are leading to environmental degradation, enormous human health problems, and unimaginable cruelty toward our fellow creatures.Incorporating systems theory, teachings from mythology and religions, and the human sciences, The World Peace Diet presents the outlines of a more empowering understanding of our world, based on a comprehension of the far-reaching implications of our food choices and the worldview those choices reflect and mandate. The author offers a set of universal principles for all people of conscience, from any religious tradition, that they can follow to reconnect with what we are eating, what was required to get it on our plate, and what happens after it leaves our plates.The World Peace Diet suggests how we as a species might move our consciousness forward so that we can be more free, more intelligent, more loving, and happier in the choices we make.Now includes a full index.

Allowed to Grow Old: Portraits of Elderly Animals from Farm Sanctuaries


Isa Leshko - 2019
    Pampered pets, however, are a rarity among animals who have been domesticated. Farm animals, for example, are usually slaughtered before their first birthday. We never stop to think about it, but the typical images we see of cows, chickens, pigs, and the like are of young animals. What would we see if they were allowed to grow old? Isa Leshko shows us, brilliantly, with this collection of portraits. To create these portraits, she spent hours with her subjects, gaining their trust and putting them at ease. The resulting images reveal the unique personality of each animal. It’s impossible to look away from the animals in these images as they unforgettably meet our gaze, simultaneously calm and challenging. In these photographs we see the cumulative effects of the hardships of industrialized farm life, but also the healing that time can bring, and the dignity that can emerge when farm animals are allowed to age on their own terms. Each portrait is accompanied by a brief biographical note about its subject, and the book is rounded out with essays that explore the history of animal photography, the place of beauty in activist art, and much more.  Open this book to any page. Meet Teresa, a thirteen-year-old Yorkshire Pig, or Melvin, an eleven-year-old Angora Goat, or Tom, a seven-year-old Broad Breasted White Turkey. You’ll never forget them.

The Mindful Vegan: A 30-Day Plan for Finding Health, Balance, Peace, and Happiness


Lani Muelrath - 2017
    Mindfulness can be the deciding factor between your successful adoption of a healthy vegan diet and repeated frustrating attempts. This simple technique goes under the surface of what is hampering your happiness, providing a sought-after solution to many of life's ups and downs by rewiring your reactivity to challenges.Certified mindfulness meditation facilitator, award winning health educator, and longtime vegan advocate Lani Muelrath has been practicing mindfulness meditation for 25 years. In The Mindful Vegan, she teaches you how to practice mindfulness and shows how it can bring freedom and a new joy to your eating--and living--experience.Backed by extensive research, with step-by-step instructions, personal stories, positivity, humor, and a handful of delicious recipes, The Mindful Vegan will help you emancipate yourself from the stranglehold that mindless and compulsive eating have on your weight, health, food choices, and, most of all, peace of mind. With Lani's guidance, you'll learn the techniques of mindfulness meditation, opening the door to creating a more resilient vegan lifestyle. You'll discover why eating in a way that lines up with your convictions about health, the environment, and ethics reduces stress and increases happiness.The Mindful Vegan sets you on a path to cultivating your capacity for genuine happiness and a more peaceful life--in a way that is personally satisfying and aligned with your deepest values. This book is for anyone who wants to be free of frustrating and baffling eating behaviors, experience a new ease around eating, and discover their naturally healthy body and weight.Stop stressing. Start living--and eating--mindfully. Your body and mind will thank you.

Mercy for Animals: One Man's Quest to Inspire Compassion and Improve the Lives of Farm Animals


Nathan Runkle - 2017
    Instead, he founded our nation's leading nonprofit organization for protecting factory farmed animals. In Mercy For Animals, Nathan brings us into the trenches of his organization's work; from MFA's early days in grassroots activism, to dangerous and dramatic experiences doing undercover investigations, to the organization's current large-scale efforts at making sweeping legislative change to protect factory farmed animals and encourage compassionate food choices.But this isn't just Nathan's story. Mercy For Animals examines how our country moved from a network of small, local farms with more than 50 percent of Americans involved in agriculture to a massive coast-to-coast industrial complex controlled by a mere 1 percent of our population--and the consequences of this drastic change on animals as well as our global and local environments. We also learn how MFA strives to protect farmed animals in behind-the-scenes negotiations with companies like Nestle and other brand names--conglomerates whose policy changes can save countless lives and strengthen our planet. Alongside this unflinching snapshot of our current food system, readers are also offered hope and solutions--big and small--for ending mistreatment of factory farmed animals. From simple diet modifications to a clear explanation of how to contact corporations and legislators efficiently, Mercy For Animals proves that you don't have to be a hardcore vegan or an animal-rights activist to make a powerful difference in the lives of animals.

Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures


Virginia Morell - 2013
    Morell probes the moral and ethical dilemmas of recognizing that even “lesser animals” have cognitive abilities such as memory, feelings, personality, and self-awareness--traits that many in the twentieth century felt were unique to human beings.By standing behaviorism on its head, Morell brings the world of nature brilliantly alive in a nuanced, deeply felt appreciation of the human-animal bond, and she shares her admiration for the men and women who have simultaneously chipped away at what we think makes us distinctive while offering a glimpse of where our own abilities come from.

Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect


Marc Bekoff - 2007
    They get hurt, they suffer, they are happy, and they take care of each other. Marc Bekoff, a renowned biologist specializing in animal minds and emotions, guides readers from high school age up—including older adults who want a basic introduction to the topic—in looking at scientific research, philosophical ideas, and humane values that argue for the ethical and compassionate treatment of animals. Citing the latest scientific studies and tackling controversies with conviction, he zeroes in on the important questions, inviting reader participation with “thought experiments” and ideas for action. Among the questions considered:    •  Are some species more valuable or more important than others?    •  Do some animals feel pain and suffering and not others?    •  Do animals feel emotions?    •  Should endangered animals be reintroduced to places where they originally lived?    •  Should animals be kept in captivity?    •  Are there alternatives to using animals for food, clothing, cosmetic testing, and dissection in the science classroom?    •  What can we learn by imagining what it feels like to be a dog or a cat or a mouse or an ant?    •  What can we do to make a difference in animals’ quality of life? Bekoff urges us not only to understand and protect animals—especially those whose help we want for our research and other human needs—but to love and respect them as our fellow beings on this planet that we all want to share in peace.

Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation


Sunaura Taylor - 2015
    Fusing philosophy, memoir, science, and the radical truths these disciplines can bring—whether about factory farming, disability oppression, or our assumptions of human superiority over animals—Taylor draws attention to new worlds of experience and empathy that can open up important avenues of solidarity across species and ability. Beasts of Burden is a wonderfully engaging and elegantly written work, both philosophical and personal, by a brilliant new voice.

Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance


Jason Hribal - 2003
    A circus elephant tramples and gores a sadistic trainer, who had repeatedly fed her lit cigarettes. A pair of orangutans at the San Diego Zoo steal a crowbar and screwdriver and break-out of their enclosure. An orca at Sea World snatches his trainer into the pool and holds her underwater until she drowns. What's going on here? Are these mere accidents? Simply cases of animals acting on instinct? That's what the zoos and animal theme parks would have you believe. But historian Jason Hribal tells a different story. In the most provocative book on animal rights since Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, Hribal argues persuasively that these escapes and attacks are deliberate, that the animals are acting with intent, that they are asserting their own desires for freedom. Fear of the Animal Planet is a harrowing, and curiously uplifting, chronicle of resistance against the captivity and torture of animals."Vengeance is mine,” sayeth the captive beast. Prepare to have your illusions of security shattered as Jason Hribal shows us that a revolution is brewing among those frustrated leaping orcas, elephants in headdresses, and tigers kept behind bars. Animal spectacles, shows, and exhibits, it turns out, pose a deep, dark threat not only to nature herself but also to those who impose their will on wild spirits and those who pop in for a few hours to watch. A riveting, eye-opening book."--Ingrid Newkirk, president and co-founder of PETAJason Hribal is an historian and educator. He is the contemporary editor of John Oswald’s 1791 classic, The Cry of Nature.Jeffrey St. Clair is co-editor of CounterPunch and author of Born Under a Bad Sky.

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals


Hal Herzog - 2010
    Herzog’s groundbreaking research on animal rights activists, cockfighters, professional dog-show handlers, veterinary students, and biomedical researchers. Blending anthropology, behavioral economics, evolutionary psychology, and philosophy, Herzog carefully crafts a seamless narrative enriched with real-life anecdotes, scientific research, and his own sense of moral ambivalence.Alternately poignant, challenging, and laugh-out-loud funny, this enlightening and provocative book will forever change the way we look at our relationships with other creatures and, ultimately, how we see ourselves.

Sistah Vegan: Food, Identity, Health, and Society: Black Female Vegans Speak


A. Breeze Harper - 2009
    Collectively, these activists are de-colonizing their bodies and minds via whole-foods veganism. By kicking junk-food habits, the more than thirty contributors all show the way toward longer, stronger, and healthier lives. Suffering from type-2 diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure, and overweight need not be the way women of color are doomed to be victimized and live out their mature lives. There are healthy alternatives. Sistah Vegan is not about preaching veganism or vegan fundamentalism. Rather, the book is about how a group of black-identified female vegans perceive nutrition, food, ecological sustainability, health and healing, animal rights, parenting, social justice, spirituality, hair care, race, gender-identification, womanism, and liberation that all go against the (refined and bleached) grain of our dysfunctional society. Thought-provoking for the identification and dismantling of environmental racism, ecological devastation, and other social injustices, Sistah Vegan is an in-your-face handbook for our time. It calls upon all of us to make radical changes for the betterment of ourselves, our planet, and by extension everyone.

When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals


Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson - 1994
    Not since Darwin's The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals has a book so thoroughly and effectively explored the full range of emotions that exist throughout the animal kingdom.From dancing squirrels to bashful gorillas to spiteful killer whales, Masson and coauthor Susan McCarthy bring forth fascinating anecdotes and illuminating insights that offer powerful proof of the existence of animal emotion. Chapters on love, joy, anger, fear, shame, compassion, and loneliness are framed by a provocative re-evaluation of how we treat animals, from hunting and eating them to scientific experimentation. Forming a complete and compelling picture of the inner lives of animals, When Elephants Weep assures that we will never look at animals in the same way again.