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Adventures Across the Species Divide
by Charles Foster
A passionate naturalist explores what it's really like to be an animal--by living like them
How can we ever be sure that we really know the other? To test the limits of our ability to inhabit lives that are not our own, Charles Foster set out to know the ultimate other: the non-humans, the beasts. And to do that, he tried to be like them, choosing a badger, an otter, a fox, a deer, and a swift. He lived alongside badgers for weeks, sleeping in a sett in a Welsh hillside and eating earthworms, learning to sense the landscape through his nose rather than his eyes. He caught fish in his teeth while swimming like an otter; rooted through London garbage cans as an urban fox; was hunted by bloodhounds as a red deer, nearly dying in the snow. And he followed the swifts on their migration route over the Strait of Gibraltar, discovering himself to be strangely connected to the birds.
A lyrical, intimate, and completely radical look at the life of animals--human and other--Being a Beast mingles neuroscience and psychology, nature writing and memoir to cross the boundaries separating the species. It is an extraordinary journey full of thrills and surprises, humor and joy. And, ultimately, it is an inquiry into the human experience in our world, carried out by exploring the full range of the life around us.
"[His] approach, along with his willingness to address and avoid the temptation for anthropomorphism, makes his book interesting and informative." - Publishers Weekly
"This book's fascinating premise, with its unique perspective of how animals perceive their surroundings, will be of interest to scientists, naturalists, and those who enjoy reading about natural history." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. 'If we live in a wood,' he writes, 'we acquire the accents of the trees.' A splendid, vivid contribution to the literature of nature." - Kirkus Reviews
"When it comes to wilderness porn, it's going to be very hard to beat Being a Beast by Charles Foster." - The Evening Standard (UK)
"A tour de force of modern nature writing... that shows us how to better love the world beyond ourselves." - The Guardian (UK)
"Being a Beast is a strange kind of masterpiece: the song of a satyr, perhaps, or nature writing as extreme sport. Foster marks out the distance between us and the beasts in a way that helps sharpen their boundaries and ours?and ours are not always where we think." - Financial Times
"An extraordinary book." - The Sunday Times (UK)
"Living like an animal in order to write about it sounds like a gimmick. It isn't. Groundbreaking? Definitely." - The Scotsman (UK)
"A highly original attempt to break free from the anthropocentrism that often characterizes nature writing … a rich, joyful, and inspiring book." - The Independent (UK)
This information about Being a Beast was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Charles Foster is a Fellow of Green Templeton College at the University of Oxford. He is a qualified veterinarian, teaches medical law and ethics, and is a practicing barrister. Much of his life has been spent on expeditions: he has run a 150-mile race in the Sahara, skied to the North Pole, and suffered injuries in many desolate and beautiful landscapes. He has written on travel, evolutionary biology, natural history, anthropology, and philosophy.
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