Melanie Challenger

A wide-ranging take on why humans have a troubled relationship with being an animal, and why we need a better one Human are the most inquisitive, emotional, imaginative, aggressive, and baffling animals on the planet. But we are also an animal that does not think it is an animal. How well do we really know ourselves? How to Be Animal tells a remarkable story of what it means to be human and argues that at the heart of our existence is a profound struggle with being animal. We possess a psychology that seeks separation between humanity and the rest of nature, and we have invented grand ideologies to magnify this. As well as piecing together the mystery of how this mindset evolved, Challenger's book examines the wide-reaching ways in which it affects our lives, from our politics to the way we distance ourselves from other species. We travel from the origin of homo sapiens through the agrarian and industrial revolutions, the age of the internet, and on to the futures of AI and human-machine interface. Challenger examines how technology influences our sense of our own animal nature and our relationship with other species with whom we share this fragile planet. That we are separated from our own animality is a delusion, according to Challenger. Blending nature writing, history, and moral philosophy, How to be Animal is both a fascinating reappraisal of what it means to be human, and a robust defense of what it means to be an animal.

How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human

Humans are the most inquisitive, emotional, imaginative, aggressive and baffling animals on the planet. But how well do we really know ourselves? How to Be Animal writes a remarkable story of what it means to be human and argues that at the heart of our psychology is a profound struggle with being animal. As well as piecing together the mystery of how this psychology evolved, the book examines the wide-reaching ways in which it affects our lives, from our politics to the ways we distance ourselves from other species. We travel from the origins of Homo sapiens through the agrarian and industrial revolutions, the age of the internet, and on to futures of AI and human-machine interface. We examine how technology influences our sense of our own animal nature and our relationship with the other species with whom we share this fragile planet. Drawing on new evidence from a wide range of disciplines, Challenger proposes that being an animal is a process, beautiful and unpredictable, and that we have a chance to tell ourselves a new story, to realise that if we matter, so does everything else.

A New History of What It Means to Be Human

How to Be Animal

What makes us human, and why are we so sure we're different from other animals? Humans are the most inquisitive, emotional, imaginative, aggressive, and baffling animals on the planet. But how well do we really know ourselves? How to Be Animal rewrites the remarkable human story and argues that at the heart of our psychology is a profound struggle with being animal. Most of our effects on the planet are the consequences of technological improvements and advances in our understanding of natural mechanisms. But why did this cognitive and technological edge come about in the first place and what kind of being has it made us? In How to Be Animal, Challenger brilliantly argues that this dizzying trajectory is the result of a singular characteristic of our species: the struggle with being an animal. Using a combination of memoir, historical texts, interweaving interviews and cultural and environmental history, How to Be Animal is lively and thought-provoking, bursting with ideas. This is a book for anyone who has ever contemplated what humans are and what makes our species so simultaneously brilliant and awful. Even more so, it is a book that asks tantalizing philosophical questions, such as whether and how human life matters. How to Be Animal is a tough-minded but ultimately sympathetic portrait of humanity. It exposes human beings as extraordinary animals defined by a profound struggle. In the third millennium, the way humans respond to being an animal among animals is the greatest and most inspiring challenge we face.

How do we think about the things we have lost? How can we use what we know about extinctions - cultural, biological and industrial - to reconnect with nature? When the gigantic bones of mammoths were first excavated from the Siberian permafrost in the eighteenth century, scientists were forced to consider a terrifying possibility: many species that had once flourished on the Earth no longer existed. For the first time, humans had to contemplate the idea of extinction. From our destruction of the natural world to the human cultures that are rapidly dying out, On Extinction is a passionate exploration of these disappearances and why they should concern us. Challenger asks questions about how we've become destructive to our environment, our emotional responses to extinctions, and how these responses might shape our future relationship with nature. She travels to the abandoned whaling stations of South Georgia, the melting icescape of Antarctica and the Inuit camps of the Arctic, where she traces the links between human activities and environmental collapse. On Extinction is an account of Challenger's journey that brings together ideas about cultural, biological and industrial extinction in a beautiful, thought-provoking and ultimately hopeful book.

How We Became Estranged from Nature

On Extinction

Zlata Filipovic

From the author of the international bestseller Zlata’s Diary comes a haunting testament to how war’s brutality affects the lives of young people Zlata Filipovic’s diary of her harrowing war experiences in the Balkans, published in 1993, made her a globally recognized spokesperson for children affected by military conflict. In Stolen Voices, she and co-editor Melanie Challenger have gathered fifteen diaries of young people coping with war, from World War I to the struggle in Iraq that continues today. Profoundly affecting testimonies of shattered youth and the gritty particulars of war in the tradition of Anne Frank, this extraordinary collection— the first of its kind—is sure to leave a lasting impression on young and old readers alike.

Young People's War Diaries, from World War I to Iraq

Stolen Voices

Realizing the link between her own estrangement from nature and the cultural shifts that led to a dramatic rise in extinctions, award–winning writer Melanie Challenger travels in search of the stories behind these losses. From an exploration of an abandoned mine in England to an Antarctic sea voyage to South Georgia's old whaling stations, from a sojourn in South America to a stay among an Inuit community in Canada, she uncovers species, cultures, and industries touched by extinction. Accompanying her on this journey are the thoughts of anthropologists, biologists, and philosophers who have come before her. Drawing on their words as well as firsthand witness and ancestral memory, Challenger traces the mindset that led to our destructiveness and proposes a path of redemption rooted in our emotional responses. This sobering yet illuminating book looks beyond natural devastation to examine "why" and "what's next."

Zlata Filipović

Ranging from World War I to the present-day conflict in Iraq, a compilation of fifteen diaries and journals records the experiences of young people during a time of war, reflecting on how children are affected by the military conflict around them. Original. 35,000 first printing.

Voor de lezers van Harari: een meeslepende geschiedenis over de mens als dier Het dier in ons biedt een ambitieuze nieuwe visie op de mens. Melanie Challenger stelt de vraag hoe goed wij onszelf kennen en hoe bij zonder wij mensen nou eigenlijk zijn. Zij laat zien hoe de menselijke psychologie gekenmerkt wordt door een voortdurende strijd met het dierlijke in onszelf. De vraag naar wat de mens is wordt steeds actueler door nieuwe wetenschappelijke technieken die ons blijvend veranderen. Het dier in ons verweeft filosofie met autobiografie, geschiedenis, interviews en actuele debatten. Na het lezen van dit verrassende boek kijk je nooit meer op dezelfde manier naar de mens.

Een nieuwe geschiedenis van de mens

Het dier in ons

Augusto Pacheco Calil

Durante a guerra, o diário de uma criança pode se tornar uma ferramenta poderosa. ELe funciona como um instantâneo do momento, e registra os acontecimentos da maneira menos enviesada possível, pois ainda não carrega o peso de uma análise feita após os fatos. BAsta lembrarmos do diário de Anne Frank, a garota judia que durante três anos se escondeu no porão de uma família holandesa, e do impacto que ele teve no pós-guerra. DA mesma maneira, foi com seu diário que Zlata Filipovic, uma das editoras deste livro, alertou o mundo para os horrores da guerra da Bósnia. Em Vozes roubadas, Zlata e Challenger resgataram catorze diários de conflitos, todos escritos por crianças ou jovens, da Primeira Guerra Mundial à mais recente invasão do Iraque, passando pelo Vietnã, pela Intifada e por diversos momentos da Segunda Guerra Mundial. É O caso da jovem russa, que ingressa no front em 1940 atrás de um grande amor. OU do rapaz nipo-americano, colocado com a família num campo de concentração em pleno Estados Unidos, para depois se alistar no Exército americano e ainda assim defender os aliados. OU da menina de Cingapura, que narra as agruras de sua vida numa prisão japonesa. Esses diversos pontos de vista compõem um rico mosaico dos conflitos que abalaram o século XX e o XXI. NO Oriente Médio, por exemplo, acompanhamos tanto o dia-a-dia de uma garota palestina durante a ocupação como o de uma jovem judia, vivendo sob o pavor dos ataques terroristas. SEm se ater a lados políticos ou visões específicas, Zlata e Challenger dão voz àqueles que a guerra procurou, direta e indiretamente, calar.

diários de guerra

Vozes roubadas

Un libro imprescindible en la línea de Sapiens, de Yuval Noah Harari. Un ensayo que mezcla las humanidades, con la filosofía moral y la ciencia. Una investigación que aporta una visión amplia y humana de lo que significa ser humano.

Una nueva historia de lo que significa ser humano

El animal que somos

From the author of the international bestseller Zlata’s Diary comes a haunting testament to war’s brutality. Zlata Filipovic´’s diary of her harrowing war experiences in the Balkans, published in 1993, made her a globally recognized spokesperson for children affected by conflict. In Stolen Voices, she and co-editor Melanie Challenger have gathered fifteen diaries of young people coping with war, from World War I to the struggle in Iraq that continues today. A profoundly affecting look at shattered youth and the gritty particulars of war in the tradition of Anne Frank, this extraordinary collection – the first of its kind – is sure to leave a lasting impression on young and old readers alike.

Young People's War Diaries, From World War I to Iraq

Short-Listed For The Felix Dennis Best First Collection Prize (Forward Prizes For Poetry 2007) In Galatea, her first collection, Challenger casts a poet's sensitive eye across the hours of a tumultuous century to create startling poems whose voice - resolute, compassionate, original - both celebrates and mourns the tensions of human nature. The name Galatea itself refers to the female figure in Greek myth sculpted from stone by the hands of Pygmalion. Becoming enamoured of the statue, Pygmalion asks of the gods that they might turn her to flesh. Drawing her themes from this central story, Challenger portrays her subjects in trembling poise between action and inaction, consummation and defeat. A series of little epiphanies, the poems are witness to the uncovering of a mediaeval woman's body in earth churned by the boots of soldiers at war, a sea of five hundred naked bodies marching across the urban horizon of a city, the transplanting of a titanium heart in the folds of an unknown individual's chest. Whatever her centre of attention, Challenger transforms the singularity of her subject into a universal experience with a deliberately harsh lyricism much her own. The result is a series of lyrics - unsettling and otherwordly - whose searches for grace reveal a dark humour and intense compassion for all the reaches of human nature.

Galatea

In Cornwall, hiking around the half-buried ruins of an old tin mine, Melanie Challenger started to think about the things that have disappeared from our world. When the gigantic bones of mammoths were first excavated from the Siberian permafrost in the eighteenth century, scientists were forced to consider a terrifying possibility: many species that had once flourished on the Earth no longer existed. For the first time, humans had to contemplate the idea of extinction. Challenger became fascinated by this idea, and started to consider how we think about the things we have lost, and, indeed, how we come to lose them. From our destruction of the natural world to the human cultures that are rapidly dying out, On Extinction is a passionate exploration of these disappearances and why they should concern us. Challenger asks questions about how we've become destructive to our environment, our emotional responses to extinctions, and how these responses might shape our future relationship with nature. She travels to the abandoned whaling stations of South Georgia, the melting icescape of Antarctica and the Inuit camps of the Arctic, where she traces the links between human activities and environmental collapse. On Extinction is an account of Challenger's journey that brings together ideas about cultural, biological and industrial extinction in a beautiful, thought-provoking and ultimately hopeful book.

Melanie Challenger

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