David Abram is an ecologist, anthropologist, and philosopher who lectures and teaches widely around the world. His prior book, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World, helped catalyze the emergence of several new disciplines, including the burgeoning field of ecopsychology. The recipient of a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction, David was named by both the Utne Reader and the British journal Resurgence as one of a hundred visionaries transforming contemporary culture. His writings on the cultural causes and consequences of environmental disarray are published in numerous magazines, scholarly journals, and anthologies. A co-founder of the Alliance for Wild Ethics (AWE), David lives with his family in the foothills of the southern Rockies.
“A wild book in every sense of the word, full of stories that will
leave you trembling, but even fuller of ideas that will send you
out into the world with new eyes.” —Bill McKibben, author of
Eaarth
“This book is like a prehistoric cave. If you have the nerve to
enter it and you get used to the dark, you’ll discover things about
storytelling which are startling, urgent and deeply true. Things
each of us once knew, but forgot when we were born into the 19th
and 20th centuries. Extraordinary rediscoveries!” —John Berger,
author of Ways of Seeing and Why Look at Animals
“I cannot imagine another book that so gently and so persuasively
alters how we look at ourselves.” —Richard Louv, author of The
Nature Principle
“One of the most compelling and important ecology books in
decades.” —Rex Weyler, co-founder of Greenpeace International
“A truly alchemical book. . . . Those of us who still hope for a
revolutionary change in our thinking toward animals, the living
land and the climate will welcome this book. Abram is an audacious
thinker, a true visionary, and, really, just a damn good nature
writer.” —San Francisco Book Review
“An intricately textured, deep breath of a book that blurs the
boundaries between human and animal, mind and earth. Prose as lush
as a moss-draped rain forest and as luminous as a high desert
night. . . Deeply resonant with indigenous ways of knowing, Abram
lets us listen in on wordless conversations with ancient boulders,
walruses,
birds, and roof beams. His profound recognition of intelligences
other than our own enables us to enter into reciprocal symbioses
that can, in turn, sustain the world. Becoming Animal illuminates a
way forward in restoring relationship with the earth, led by our
vibrant animal bodies to re-inhabit the glittering world."
—Orion
“A stunning, compelling journey into embodied, earthly
intelligence, Becoming Animal is philosophy at its engaging best.
Prepare for a wild, profound ride into the essence of the human
animal—an essence embedded in communion with the Earth. A must read
for anyone concerned about the future of the planet and ourselves.”
—Kierán Suckling, co-founder and Executive Director, Center for
Biological Diversity
“In Becoming Animal, David Abram has crafted the rarest of literary
gems: a sublime effort combining transcendent prose, lucid insight,
and lasting consequence.” —Shambhala Sun
“If we are to survive—indeed, if we are to stop the dominant
culture from killing the planet—it will be in great measure because
of brave and brilliant beings like David Abram. This is a
beautifully written, deeply moving, and important book.” —Derrick
Jensen, author of A Language Older Than Words and Endgame
Becoming Animal brings us home to ourselves as living organs of
this wild planet. Its teachings leap off the page and translate
immediately into lived experience. —Joanna Macy, Buddhist scholar
and activist
“Without doubt one of America’s greatest nature writers, one who
ably follows in the footsteps of Muir, Thoreau and Leopold. . .
.[A] book of such transformative potential that it needs to be read
twice in quick succession to get the full benefit. . . . The
language is luminous, the style hypnotic. Abram weaves a spell that
brings the world alive.”
—Resurgence
“Pure enthusiasm drives Abram to explore the yearning of our body
for the larger body of Earth. . . . [Abram] brings the magician’s
sense of mystery and playful surprise. . . His celebratory embrace
of all that surrounds him is refreshing in the extreme.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“As with many deeply original—and radical—books, this work may
startle, even provoke the reader in its electric reversal of
conventional thought. . . . [T]his is a portrait of the artist as a
young raven, arguing, with all the subtlety of his mind, for the
mindedness of the body. An exercise of uncanny imagination.” —Jay
Griffiths, author of Wild
“This brave and magical book summons wild wonder to remind us who
we are.”
—Amory B. Lovins, Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute
“Speculative, learned, and always ‘lucid and precise’ as the eye of
the vulture that confronted him once on a cliff ledge, Abram has
one of those rare minds which, like the mind of a musician or a
great mathematician, fuses dreaminess with smarts.” —The Village
Voice
“Refreshing. [Abram] allows himself to be expansive, sentimental,
and more than a little mad. . . . His book is transformative,
animated by piercing observations and hallucinatory intensity.”
—Bookforum
“This startling, sparkling book challenges the technological
temper of our times by returning us to the animal body in
ourselves. Abram shows brilliantly how this body brings us back to
Earth in a series of acutely moving descriptions of its polysensory
genius. An original work of primary philosophy, it is written with
verve, passion, and poetry.” —Edward S. Casey, author of The Fate
of Place: A Philosophical History
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