Our Wild Calling: How Connecting With Animals Can Transform Our Lives - and Save Theirs

"Richard Louv has done it again. A remarkable book that will help everyone break away from their fixed gaze at the screens that dominate our lives and remember instead that we are animals in a world of animals." Bill McKibben, author of Falter

Richard Louv's landmark book, Last Child in the Woods, inspired an international movement to connect children and nature. Now Louv redefines the future of human-animal coexistence. Our Wild Calling explores these powerful and mysterious bonds and how they can transform our mental, physical, and spiritual lives, serve as an antidote to the growing epidemic of human loneliness, and help us tap into the empathy required to preserve life on Earth. Louv interviews researchers, theologians, wildlife experts, indigenous healers, psychologists, and others to show how people are communicating with animals in ancient and new ways; how dogs can teach children ethical behavior; how animal-assisted therapy may yet transform the mental health field; and what role the human-animal relationship plays in our spiritual health. He reports on wildlife relocation and on how the growing populations of wild species in urban areas are blurring the lines between domestic and wild animals.

Our Wild Calling makes the case for protecting, promoting, and creating a sustainable and shared habitat for all creatures — not out of fear, but out of love. Transformative and inspiring, this book points us toward what we all long for in the age of technology: real connection.

"[An] intriguing and poetic treatise . . . Thoughtful and hopeful, Louv's work is a stirring look at 'the blurred lines that have always existed between wild and domestic, human and other than human.' " Publishers Weekly

"Impassioned and compelling . . . A thoughtfully researched, poetically inspiring call to action that will resonate with a broad range of readers." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"Louv writes of our need for immersion in nature and of how our interactions with animals can help us to save not only ourselves, but also the planet. In lyrical, sometimes mystical prose, he challenges our assumptions about how we relate to other species." Booklist (Starred Review)

"These pages weave a wondrous tapestry in which we all are crucial threads. It's a picture of our own creation, about a future we will share, a future we can strive to make worth living for." Carl Safina, author of the New York Times bestseller Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel

Richard Louv is a journalist and the author of ten books, including Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, The Nature Principle, and Vitamin N. Translated into twenty languages, his books have helped launch an international movement to connect children, families, and communities to nature. He is cofounder and chair emeritus of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, which supports a new nature movement. Louv has written for the New York Times, Outside magazine, Orion Magazine, Parents, and many other publications. He appears regularly on national radio and TV, and lectures throughout the world. In 2008, he was awarded the Audubon Medal. Prior recipients have included Rachel Carson, E. O. Wilson, President Jimmy Carter, and Sir David Attenborough.