How to Love Animals

In a Human-Shaped World

By: Henry Mance

Narrated by: Henry Mance

Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

A personal journey into our evolving relationships with animals, and a thought-provoking look at how those bonds are being challenged and reformed across disciplines

We love animals, but does that make the animals' lives any happier? With factory farms, climate change, and deforestation, this might be the worst time in history to be an animal. If we took animals' experiences seriously, how could we eat, think, and live differently?

How to Love Animals is a lively and important portrait of our evolving relationship with animals, and how we can share our planet fairly. Mance works in a slaughterhouse and on a pig farm to explore the reality of eating meat and dairy. He explores our dilemmas over hunting wild animals, over-fishing the seas, visiting zoos, and saving wild spaces. What might happen if we extended the love we show to our pets to other sentient beings? In an age of extinction and pandemics, our relationship with animals has become unsustainable. Mance argues that there has never been a better time to become vegetarian or vegan, and that the conservation movement can flourish, if people in wealthy countries shrink their footprint.

Mance seeks answers from chefs, farmers, activists, philosophers, politicians, and tech visionaries who are redefining how we think about animals. Inspired by the author's young daughters, his book is a story of discovery and hope that outlines how we can find a balance with animals that fits with our basic love for them.

©2021 Henry Mance (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“[A] series of investigations, presented with humor and humility, into our contradictory relationships with pets, livestock and wildlife.... Mance's argument is both convincing and urgent: we need to make dramatic changes to our lifestyle if we want to prevent ecological catastrophe.” (The Guardian)

“This fascinating book makes a persuasive, sanctimony-free case for treating animals more humanely.... [Mance] does such a charming job of revealing the richness of animal inner lives.” (The Times, London)

“[Mance] is a skillful writer who never shies away from painful stories, and leavens even the grimmest episodes with humor. He also has a rare ability to couch strenuous ethical arguments in terms that are warmly familiar.” (The Economist)

Rich, diverse, thought provoking

You will learn tons of good information in this book about all the ways in which we utterly disregard the needs of our fellow earthly creatures.

I have tons of underlined content that I will read into my phone. This book is gold for an animal-rights enthusiast.