In addition to enjoying anthropomorphic fiction, I've always loved learning about animals and the natural world. It probably started with the '90s TV show Kratt's Creatures as well as a handful of nature documentaries from the Discovery channel, and it even drove me to try to build a submarine in my parent's basement out of wood(!) to hopefully one day explore the ocean depths. Well, the (mini) submarine never materialized except in the form of Legos, but my curiosity continued to lead me to dozens of books on birds, octopuses, reptilians, dinosaurs, and more.
Here are my ten favorite non-fiction books about animals:
1. Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America's First National Park by Alston Chase. Chase is a 'gadfly' in the alleged garden of Eden, curiously exploring and uncovering dark secrets of the National Park program and its mismanagement of wilderness. The plight of bears, wolves, elk, beaver, and more is truly heartbreaking. This book is one of the most impactful I have ever read, so much so that I called his landline phone to thank him in 2018. Chase passed in 2022. I wrote a longer recommendation for it here and highly recommend this speech he gave in 1994 on environmentalism.
2. American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee. In 1995, after passionate public debate, legal suits, and political agendas, fifteen Canadian wolves were introduced to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. The next year, they added sixteen more. By 2003, 174 wolves called America's first and largest national park home and were divided into fourteen packs. This led to a new, golden age of research in not just wolves, but whole ecosystems. For example, When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, rivers came back. Willow is a riparian shrub that beavers love to eat. However, the elk in the park also love to eat it and the great herd had essentially stripped the riverbanks clean for generations. So there were fewer beavers for many years and the waterways languished in the park. When the wolves came back in 1995, the elk moved away to higher ground for better defense from and visibility of these super-predators. So the willow grew back. The beaver population grew too. The newly dammed waterways lead to streams, ponds, and thus more flora and fauna. You can read my full recommendation here.
3. The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony. In South Africa, rogue elephants are shot. So when Lawrence Anthony, "the Indiana Jones of conservation," was asked to take in a whole herd in 1999—a herd who had tried to escape from their owners many times and seen their leader killed by humans, he knew his answer was the animals' life or death sentence. Fighting off desperate poachers, building electric fences from scratch, protecting other creatures on the reserve, treating various sicknesses—Anthony's obstacles were endless. And perhaps most difficult of all was achieving what few humans ever have with rogue elephants: heal their trust in humans. I wrote a longer recommendation for it here.
4. One Man's Wilderness by Dick Proenneke. Dick lived alone for thirty years in Twin Lakes, Alaska. This is his journal covering the first 18 months of the odyssey. It's full of animals — bear, fish, elk, eagles, big-horned deer, and a rascally red squirrel who gives Dick a lot of grief. I wrote a longer recommendation for it here.
5. Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith. I wrote a longer recommendation for it here.
6. The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman. Birds are smart. They make tools. They count. They imitate behaviors of other birds and even humans. They invent new solutions to old problems. They remember where they put things—especially the Western scrub jay which can recall up to 33,000 winter food caches. They can anticipate and guard against storms. They exploit opportunities, like the great tits and blue tits of the 1920's who learned how to open cardboard bottle tops to drink the cream off the top of milk bottles, and spread their knowledge over the next twenty years to hundreds of localities throughout England, Wales, and Ireland. Birds make nests up to idiosyncratic esthetic standards, even in the absence of females and the chance of mating. The allegedly 'bird-brained' pigeon has an incredible homing instinct and ability to traverse foreign landscapes...These incredible feats and others suggest profound mental capacities and abilities, ones comparable to those found in some primates.I wrote a longer recommendation for it here.
7. An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments by Ali Almossawi. A clever picture book full of 19 logical fallacies and 19 cute animal illustrations. Some of the examples were a bit too on-the-nose-political for my taste, but I appreciate the Aesopian spirit of the book a lot. I wrote a longer recommendation for it here.
8. The Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman. Also, excellent. It looks more into birdsong, parenting, and communication methods within social settings.
9. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte. One of those rare non-fiction works that reads more like a thrilling yarn. It's 400+ pages though, so you gotta love dinosaurs and science writing for this one. I've heard that The Rise and Reign of Mammals is also quite good.
10. The Tiger by John Vallant. This is a true account of the hunt for a man-eating tiger in eastern Russia. It reads like a tense thriller and I cannot believe it hasn't yet been made into a movie.
Here are my ten favorite non-fiction books about animals:
1. Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America's First National Park by Alston Chase. Chase is a 'gadfly' in the alleged garden of Eden, curiously exploring and uncovering dark secrets of the National Park program and its mismanagement of wilderness. The plight of bears, wolves, elk, beaver, and more is truly heartbreaking. This book is one of the most impactful I have ever read, so much so that I called his landline phone to thank him in 2018. Chase passed in 2022. I wrote a longer recommendation for it here and highly recommend this speech he gave in 1994 on environmentalism.
2. American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee. In 1995, after passionate public debate, legal suits, and political agendas, fifteen Canadian wolves were introduced to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. The next year, they added sixteen more. By 2003, 174 wolves called America's first and largest national park home and were divided into fourteen packs. This led to a new, golden age of research in not just wolves, but whole ecosystems. For example, When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, rivers came back. Willow is a riparian shrub that beavers love to eat. However, the elk in the park also love to eat it and the great herd had essentially stripped the riverbanks clean for generations. So there were fewer beavers for many years and the waterways languished in the park. When the wolves came back in 1995, the elk moved away to higher ground for better defense from and visibility of these super-predators. So the willow grew back. The beaver population grew too. The newly dammed waterways lead to streams, ponds, and thus more flora and fauna. You can read my full recommendation here.
3. The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony. In South Africa, rogue elephants are shot. So when Lawrence Anthony, "the Indiana Jones of conservation," was asked to take in a whole herd in 1999—a herd who had tried to escape from their owners many times and seen their leader killed by humans, he knew his answer was the animals' life or death sentence. Fighting off desperate poachers, building electric fences from scratch, protecting other creatures on the reserve, treating various sicknesses—Anthony's obstacles were endless. And perhaps most difficult of all was achieving what few humans ever have with rogue elephants: heal their trust in humans. I wrote a longer recommendation for it here.
4. One Man's Wilderness by Dick Proenneke. Dick lived alone for thirty years in Twin Lakes, Alaska. This is his journal covering the first 18 months of the odyssey. It's full of animals — bear, fish, elk, eagles, big-horned deer, and a rascally red squirrel who gives Dick a lot of grief. I wrote a longer recommendation for it here.
5. Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith. I wrote a longer recommendation for it here.
6. The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman. Birds are smart. They make tools. They count. They imitate behaviors of other birds and even humans. They invent new solutions to old problems. They remember where they put things—especially the Western scrub jay which can recall up to 33,000 winter food caches. They can anticipate and guard against storms. They exploit opportunities, like the great tits and blue tits of the 1920's who learned how to open cardboard bottle tops to drink the cream off the top of milk bottles, and spread their knowledge over the next twenty years to hundreds of localities throughout England, Wales, and Ireland. Birds make nests up to idiosyncratic esthetic standards, even in the absence of females and the chance of mating. The allegedly 'bird-brained' pigeon has an incredible homing instinct and ability to traverse foreign landscapes...These incredible feats and others suggest profound mental capacities and abilities, ones comparable to those found in some primates.I wrote a longer recommendation for it here.
7. An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments by Ali Almossawi. A clever picture book full of 19 logical fallacies and 19 cute animal illustrations. Some of the examples were a bit too on-the-nose-political for my taste, but I appreciate the Aesopian spirit of the book a lot. I wrote a longer recommendation for it here.
8. The Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman. Also, excellent. It looks more into birdsong, parenting, and communication methods within social settings.
9. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte. One of those rare non-fiction works that reads more like a thrilling yarn. It's 400+ pages though, so you gotta love dinosaurs and science writing for this one. I've heard that The Rise and Reign of Mammals is also quite good.
10. The Tiger by John Vallant. This is a true account of the hunt for a man-eating tiger in eastern Russia. It reads like a tense thriller and I cannot believe it hasn't yet been made into a movie.
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