Wild Souls: Freedom & Flourishing in the Non-Human World

This book stayed swirling in my thoughts for weeks after I finished it. Fascinating, thought-provoking, and doesn't pull any punches talking about humans, animals, and the nature of our co-existence. I can't recommend it enough. Recommended By Lesley A., Powells.com

From an acclaimed environmental writer, a groundbreaking and provocative new vision for our relationships with-and responsibilities toward-the planet's wild animals.

Protecting wild animals and preserving the environment are two ideals so seemingly compatible as to be almost inseparable. But in fact, between animal welfare and conservation science there exists a space of underexamined and unresolved tension: wildness itself. When is it right to capture or feed wild animals for the good of their species? How do we balance the rights of introduced species with those already established within an ecosystem? Can hunting be ecological? Are any animals truly wild on a planet that humans have so thoroughly changed? No clear guidelines yet exist to help us resolve such questions.

Transporting readers into the field with scientists tackling these profound challenges, Emma Marris tells the affecting and inspiring stories of animals around the globe-from Peruvian monkeys to Australian bilbies, rare Hawai'ian birds to majestic Oregon wolves. And she offers a companionable tour of the philosophical ideas that may steer our search for sustainability and justice in the non-human world. Revealing just how intertwined animal life and human life really are, Wild Souls will change the way you think about nature-and our place within it.

"An absorbing and nuanced blend of philosophy and science... Wild Souls questions the very concepts of wildness and nature. The result challenges readers to reconsider how they relate to nonhuman animals, from caged creatures to polar bears in the warming north." Science News

"This is a deeply felt and deeply thought book, brimming with compassion and rue, that throws out revelations like a stream of arrows, each one aimed at the very heart of the matter." Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of THE NOONDAY DEMON

"Where do wild animals fit in a human-dominated world? The answer, for better or worse, will be determined by humans. Emma Marris's exploration of this question is at once thoughtful, thought-provoking, and thoroughly absorbing." Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of THE SIXTH EXTINCTION

"Everybody who cares about animals should read this fascinating book." Temple Grandin, author of ANIMALS IN TRANSLATION

"Fascinating . . . hands-on philosophy, put to test in the real world... Marris believes that our idea of wildness — our obsession with purity — is misguided. No animal remains untouched by human hands... the science isn't the hard part. The real challenge is the ethics, the act of imagining our appropriate place in that world." Outside Magazine

Emma Marris is an award-winning journalist whose writing on science and the environment has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, National Geographic, Wired, Outside, High Country News, and many other publications, including Best American Science and Nature Writing. Her previous book, Rambunctious Garden, was the subject of her TED Talk, which has over 1.4 million views. She was also featured on the TED Radio Hour and the series Adam Ruins Everything. She is based in Klamath Falls, Oregon.