Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit

"Beautifully written essays" on animals, "the real and mythological, the ordinary and the exotic, the wild and the domesticated" (Publishers Weekly).

Humans were surrounded by other animals from the beginning of time: they were food, clothes, adversaries, companions, jokes, and gods. And yet, our companions in evolution are leaving the world—both as physical beings and spiritual symbols—and not returning.

In this collection of linked essays, Alison Hawthorne Deming examines what the disap...