Our Symphony with Animals: On Health, Empathy, and Our Shared Destinies

Our Symphony with Animals: On Health, Empathy, and Our Shared Destinies

Our Symphony with Animals: On Health, Empathy, and Our Shared Destinies

Our Symphony with Animals: On Health, Empathy, and Our Shared Destinies

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Overview

A leader in the fields of animal ethics and neurology, Dr. Aysha Akhtar examines the rich human-animal connection and how interspecies empathy enriches our well-being.

Deftly combining medicine, social history and personal experience, Our Symphony with Animals is the first book by a physician to show how deeply the well-being of humans and animals are entwined.

Interwoven throughout is Dr. Akhtar’s own story of being a young girl who was bullied in school and sexually abused by her uncle. Feeling abandoned by humanity, it was only when she met Sylvester, a dog who had also been abused, that she found strength for both of them.

Against the backdrop of her inspiring story, Dr. Akhtar asks, what do we gain when we recognize our kinship with animals? She travels around the country to tell the stories of a varied cast of characters—including a former mobster, an industrial chicken farmer, a Marine veteran—and comes face to face with a serial killer.

Through storytelling that is entertaining, profound, and touching, Dr. Akhtar reveals what happens when we both break and forge bonds with animals. She demonstrates how humans are neurologically designed to empathize with animals, and how violence against them goes against our nature. In equal measure, the love and friendship we give to other species biologically reverberates back to us.

Humanity’s compassion for animals is the next step in our species’ moral evolution and a vital component of our own health. Our Symphony with Animals is the definitive account for why our relationships with animals matter.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781643136004
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Publication date: 05/11/2021
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 514,322
Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Aysha Akhtar, M.D., M.P.H., is double Board-Certified in both Neurology and Preventive Medicine and is the Deputy Director of the Army's Traumatic Brain Injury Program. Previously, she worked for the Office of Counterterrorism and Emerging Threats of the Food and Drug Administration. She is a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Public Health Service, is a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and is a Consultant Editor for the Journal of Animal Ethics. She is the author of Animals and Public Health and lives in Maryland with her husband Patrick and their ornery feline, Silos.

Carl Safina's work has been recognized with MacArthur, Pew, and Guggenheim Fellowships, and his writing has won Orion, Lannan, and National Academies literary awards and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals. He has a PhD in ecology from Rutgers University and he hosted the 10-part PBS series Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina. He is the author of seven books, most recently Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel.

Table of Contents

Foreword Carl Safina ix

Prologue xv

Part 1 Healing with Animals 1

1 What Is Home? 3

2 Finding Our Voices 35

3 Humanizing Ourselves 67

Part 2 Breaking with Animals 101

4 The Making of a Murderer 103

5 It's Just an Animal 138

6 DO We Hurt with Animals? 172

Part 3 Joining with Animals 209

7 Standing with Animals 211

8 Friends 235

Afterword 267

Notes 269

Acknowledgments 297

Index 299

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