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On Animals

On Animals

by Susan Orlean

Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster ·2021 ·256 pages
Near the Top
Near the Top
I Index
55/99
Top of the Pile

82/99

Critics' Rating Index

Maybe Someday

28/99

Readers' Rating Index

n/a

Scholars' Citation Index

96/99

Volume of Reviews

81/99

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About This Book

Susan Orlean—the beloved New Yorker staff writer and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Library Book—gathers a lifetime of musings, meditations, and in-depth profiles about animals. "How we interact with animals has preoccupied philosophers, poets, and naturalists for ages," writes Susan Orlean. Since the age of six, when Orlean wrote and illustrated a book called Herbert the Near-Sighted Pigeon, she's been drawn to stories about how we live with animals, and how they abide by us. Now, in On Animals, she examines animal-human relationships through the compelling tales she has written over the course of her celebrated career. These stories consider a range of creatures—the household pets we dote on, the animals we raise to end up as meat on our plates, the creatures who could eat us for dinner, the various tamed and untamed animals we share our planet with who are central to human life. In her own backyard, Orlean discovers the delights of keeping chickens. In a different backyard, in New Jersey, she meets a woman who has twenty-three pet tigers—something none of her neighbors knew about until one of the tigers escapes. In Iceland, the world's most famous whale resists the efforts to set him free; in Morocco, the world's hardest-working donkeys find respite at a special clinic. We meet a show dog and a lost dog and a pigeon who knows exactly how to get home. Equal parts delightful and profound, enriched by Orlean's stylish prose and precise research, these stories celebrate the meaningful cross-species connections that grace our collective existence.


Reviews

"The animal kingdom may be as corralled as we are, but it's also 'alien, unknowable, familiar but mysterious.' Orlean acknowledges the mystery but doesn't explore it."

MARGARET WAPPLER· Los Angeles Times Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"The author handles dogs like a virtuoso, with 10 hilarious pages on the wacky, expensive, but sometimes profitable life of a champion show dog ..."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"This elegant curation makes one essay lead to another through manifold connections, some so tiny as to be almost subliminal, some functioning as updates across time, and all working in concert to convey ideas that no one essay could manage on its own ..."

Margaret Renkl· The New York Times Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"especially good when Orlean investigates the consequences of humans taking from other species what they are not prepared to give."

Jake Cline· The Washington Post Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Most of the 16 essays were published during that 2000-2009 decade."

BARBARA J. KING· NPR Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"I very much enjoyed Orlean's perspective in these original, perceptive, and clever essays showcasing the sometimes strange, sometimes sick, sometimes tender relationships between people and animals ..."

Sy Montgomery· The Boston Globe Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Orlean strikes a perfect balance between hilarious and informative ..."

Michael Magras· The Minneapolis Star Tribune Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Orlean thoughtfully and piquantly contrasts the marvels of animals and the damage humans do to them and their habitats, threatening their very survival ..."

Donna Seaman· Booklist Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"tends to build, novelistically, through its individual pieces into a broad meditation on how the connections we make or fail to make with animals mark us profoundly along our human journey."

Matt Damsker· USA Today Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Does any prominent nonfiction writer range more widely?"

Jeremy McCarter· The Wall Street Journal Read review ↗ Near the Top

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