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Education and Progress through Reading
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Here are various books that I encourage you to read that describe the plight and struggle of animals in our society. Please also see the websites listed under "Smart Consumer" to learn about animals and how you can help them today.

If you would like some suggestions for other books or if you have a book recommendation please e-mail me.

Click on a book title to learn more about it or to order it directly from Amazon.com. A small percentage of each sale helps offset my pro bono (free) work that I do. This work makes up roughly 25% of my practice.

Sister Species: Woman, Animals and Social Justice
Edited by Lisa A. Kremmerer, Forward by Carol J. Adams

Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice addresses interconnections between speciesism, sexism, racism, and homophobia, clarifying why social justice activists in the twenty-first century must challenge intersecting forms of oppression.
 
This anthology presents bold and gripping--sometimes horrifying--personal narratives from fourteen activists who have personally explored links of oppression between humans and animals, including such exploitative enterprises as cockfighting, factory farming, vivisection, and the bushmeat trade. Sister Species asks readers to rethink how they view "others," how they affect animals with their daily choices, and how they might bring change for all who are abused. These essays remind readers that women have always been important to social justice and animal advocacy, and they urge each of us to recognize the links that continue to bind all oppressed individuals. The astonishing honesty of these contributors demonstrates with painful clarity why every woman should be an animal activist and why every animal activist should be a feminist.
 
Contributors are Carol J. Adams, Tara Sophia Bahna-James, Karen Davis, Elizabeth Jane Farians, Hope Ferdowsian, Linda Fisher, Twyla François, Christine Garcia, A. Breeze Harper, Sangamithra Iyer, Pattrice Jones, Lisa Kemmerer, Allison Lance, Ingrid Newkirk, Lauren Ornelas, and Miyun Park.

Animal Equality : Language and Liberation
by Joan Dunayer, Carol J. Adams

The first book on language and nonhuman oppression--and the most progressive animal-rights book to date--Animal Equality shows that deceptive, biased words sustain injustice toward nonhuman animals. Speciesism (prejudice against nonhuman animals) survives through lies. Animal Equality's compelling evidence of nonhuman thought and emotion debunks language that characterizes other animals as unreasoning or insensitive. Vivid descriptions of hunting, sportfishing, zoos, aquaprisons, vivisection, and food-industry captivity and slaughter reveal the cruelty that misleading words legitimize and conceal. Animal Equality also uncovers the speciesist attitudes and practices underlying much sexist and racist language. Every animal--nonhuman or human--deserves equal consideration and protection, Joan Dunayer argues. Offering pronoun, vocabulary, and style guidelines, she proposes new language that will bring us closer to nonhuman liberation.

Animal Factories
by Jim Mason, Peter Singer (Contributor)

This book raised a storm of controversy upon its original publication in 1980. Now authors Mason and Singer have updated their animal rights classic for the 1990s. More than 50 black-and-white photographs.

Ingram
Unrestrained technology applied to animals, fueled by the desire for increased profit, exacts a price on human values, the environment, the health of consumers and the welfare of small farmers that we can no longer afford to pay. Mason and Singer address these problems and offer solutions in Animal Factories Update. Black-and-white photographs.


Animal Liberation
by Peter Singer

Animal Liberation is the revised and updated edition of the definitive animal liberation text, that reports that many of the abuses of the past have decreased, serious new offenses have taken their place. This book will attract supporters and skeptics alike because of its persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency, and justice.


Animals, Property, and the Law
by Gary L. Francione, William M. Kunstler

"Here is a work of unquestionable historic importance the likes of which the world of ideas has never seen before: profound in its conception, execution, and its possible consequences. Gary Francione brings a real world understanding second to none in how American law impacts animals. It will be of interest to professionals in law, philosophy, government, veterinary medicine, and political science, but also among those who 'use' animals and those who profess the desire to protect them."
—Tom Regan, North Caroling State University


Animal Underworld: Inside America's Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species
by Alan Green

A vast and previously undisclosed underground economy exists in the United States. The products bought and sold: animals. In Animal Underworld, veteran investigative journalist Alan Green exposes the sleazy, sometimes illegal web of those who trade in rare and exotic creatures. Green and The Center for Public Integrity reveal which American zoos and amusement parks dump their "surplus" animals on the middlemen adept at secretly redirecting them into the private pet trade. We're taken to exotic-animal auctions, where the anonymous high bidders are often notorious dealers, hunting-ranch proprietors, and profit-minded charlatans masquerading as conservationists. We visit some of the nation's most prestigious universities and research laboratories, whose diseased monkeys are "laundered" through this same network of breeders and dealers until they finally reach the homes of unsuspecting pet owners. And we meet the men and women who make their living by skirting through loopholes in the law, or by ignoring the law altogether. For anyone who cares about animals; for pet owners, zoo-goers, wildlife conservationists, and animal welfare advocates, Animal Underworld is gripping, shocking reading.


When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals
by Susan McCarthy, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

This national bestseller exploring the complex emotional lives of animals was hailed as "a masterpiece" by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and as "marvelous" by Jane Goodall.

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.


Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals
by Steven M. Wise, Jane Goodall

Nonhuman animals are not "persons" in the legal sense and therefore have no legal rights. Wise, an animal rights activist and lawyer, argues for the entitlement of animals to legal rights in this scholarly new book. The author defines exactly what is meant by legal personhood through an overview of cases involving humans and demonstrates how this definition can be applied to animals, specifically chimpanzees and bonobos. The book's title is somewhat misleading, as the vast majority of the author's arguments refer to these two great apes, our closest relatives. The parallels drawn between legal arguments for human rights and research showing that apes demonstrate the same mental capacities as the human persons make for a compelling argument against the injustice of denying basic legal rights to apes. The text is extensively footnoted with quotes from a vast body of literature, legal and otherwise. Whether or not readers are convinced by Wise's arguments, they will find much to think about in this carefully reasoned and well-written book. Nancy Bent


Diet for a New America: How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health, Happiness
and the Future of Life on Earth

by John Robbins

From John Robbins, a new edition of the classic that awakened the conscience of a nation. Since the 1987 publication of Diet for a New America, beef consumption in the United States has fallen a remarkable 19%. While many forces are contributing to this dramatic shift in our habits, Diet for a New America is considered to be one of the most important. Diet for a New America is a startling examination of the food we currently buy and eat in the United States, and the astounding moral, economic, and emotional price we pay for it.

In Section I, John Robbins takes an extraordinary look at our dependence on animals for food and the inhumane conditions under which these animals are raised. It becomes clear that the price we pay for our eating habits is measured in the suffering of animals, a suffering so extreme and needless that it disrupts our very place in the web of life.

Section II challenges the belief that consuming meat is a requirement for health by pointing our the vastly increased rate of disease caused by pesticides, hormones, additives, and other chemicals now a routine part of our food production. The author shows us that the high health risk is unnecessary, and that the production, preparation, and consumption of food can once again be a healthy process.

In Section III, Robbins looks at the global implications of a meat-based diet and concludes that the consumption of the resources necessary to produce meat is a major factor in our ecological crisis.

Diet for a New America is the single most eloquent argument for a vegetarian lifestyle ever published. Eloquently, evocatively, and entertainingly written, it is a cant put down book guaranteed to amaze, infuriate, but ultimately educate and empower the reader. A pivotal book nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction in 1987.:

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