book reviews

Take from the Director of Education for Mercy For Animals Nick Cooney, you may never look at vegans and vegetarians the same after reading this book. Veganomics: The Surprising Science of What Motivates Vegetarians, from the Breakfast Table to the Bedroom (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2013) is more than a carrot on a string, as the cover so cleverly depicts. It’s a tell-all full of real science for the most curious vegans and vegetarians.

We all have questions about why we are the way we are. Animal rights icon Melanie Joy has a few for why we treat animals the way we do in Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism (Conari Press 2011). Full of real, powerful portrayals of human behavior, this book is worth revisiting almost a decade after its first publication.

Few authors have captured the illustrious lives of animals in fiction. Leave it to Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee in The Lives of Animals (Princeton University Press 2016). Captivating and serious, yet full of beautiful description and South African character, this book does justice to Coetzee’s legacy as both a storyteller and philosopher.

As we near the end of Veganuary, the annual challenge for non-vegans to go vegan for the month (and hopefully carry it into the rest of the new year), let’s revisit a classic. How To Go Vegan: The why, the how, and everything you need to make going vegan easy, the guidebook to Veganuary by Kate Schuler (Hodder & Stoughton 2017), is a great point of reference for anyone who is curious about going vegan.

This book is fascinating. We all get hungry, have cravings, and don’t really know why. Let Rachel Herz’s Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship With Food (W.W. Norton & Company 2019) tell you exactly why you eat what you eat in intricate detail. Dietary science is something to wrap your head around–in a bittersweet kind of way–and this book will help you do that.

Matt Pritchard SWYD/YouTube

The latest addition to the vegan main stage is BBC host, skateboarder, author, and legendary prankster Mathew Pritchard. His new vegan cooking show Dirty Vegan launched on BBC last week! Pick up his cookbook by the same name Dirty Vegan (Mitchell Beazley 2018) for a lot more plant-based badassery.

Ready for a real adventure? Animal-cruelty fighting raccoon Persimmon takes us on a journey to end animal suffering in all its forms in Persimmon Takes on the World (Fathoming Press 2015). Christopher Locke tells this story with the nuance of the animal rights movement and a cast of compelling characters compared to the likes of the Hunger Games and Captain Underpants.

Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals

Do you have the tools you need to fight? Protest Kitchen: Fight Injustice, Save the Planet, and Fuel Your Resistance One Meal at a Time (Conari Press 2018) by Carol J. Adams and Virginia Messina connects vegans with broader resistance movements in a beautiful ode to the fight ahead. Plus, more than 50 great vegan recipes to get you there, one meal at a time.

Get ready for a trip. In Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom (Chelsea Green 2018), Fred Provenza details the complicated relationship between humans and food with the kind of well-sourced, yet misguided science that restores the plant-based future to its rightful balance. The shortest line to draw between humankind and nature is what we eat, after all.

Ever felt like you needed to hit the reset button? Sometimes, our bodies just don’t work the way they should. There’s where Kim-Julie Hansen’s new book Vegan Reset: The 28-Day Plan to Kickstart Your Healthy Lifestyle (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2018) comes in extra handy.