Book Review Archive

Sep 01, 2026 Book Review: How a New Wave of Books Is Rewriting the Beaver’s Reputation

Posted at 10:46h In Animals in Our World, Articles, Book Review, Human-Animal Interaction, Tales of WellBeing - By Steven Hansch and Leslie Barcus

For most of the last four centuries, the beaver's relationship with North America was transactional. Europeans wanted its fur to make hats. Farmers wanted the dams gone from their fields. Homeowners wanted its flooding to stop. In each case, the animal was assessed by what...

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Jul 29, 2026 The Economics of Non-Human Animals: Revaluing Life for a Liveable Planet

Posted at 05:48h In Book Review, Economics, Global Awareness, PAE Well-being, Tales of WellBeing - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

This open-access book, published by Springer in 2026 and edited by Nicoletta Batini, is Volume 63 of the series Natural Resource Management and Policy. It includes twenty-one chapters covering themes from human economic symbiosis with other animals to human predatory (consumptive) uses of animals, including...

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May 26, 2026 Book Review: “Mental Health Interventions in Everyday Life” by Alan E. Kazdin

Posted at 11:40h In Book Review, Feel Better, People Well-being, Tales of WellBeing - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

Professor Alan Kazdin is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Child Psychiatry at Yale University and a former President of the American Psychological Association (2008). He is also a careful scientist who promotes evidence-based treatments for mental health. In his words:- "Our recent research shows worldwide...

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Apr 29, 2026 Book Review: “Plastics Inc.: The Secret History and Shocking Future of Big Oil’s Biggest Bet” by Beth Gardiner

Posted at 11:48h In Book Review, Global Awareness, Plastics, Tales of WellBeing - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

Published by Penguin Random House Plastics Inc.: The Secret History and Shocking Future of Big Oil's Biggest Bet is a compelling new book by American journalist Beth Gardiner that explores Big Oil's role in continuing to extract fossil fuels, which serve as the feedstock for ongoing...

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Mar 27, 2026 Book Review: “Shelter from the Storm” by Julian Hattem

Posted at 13:16h In Articles, Book Review, Global Awareness, Tales of WellBeing - By Steven Hansch and Leslie Barcus

In his new book, Shelter from the Storm: How Climate Change Is Creating a New Era of Migration (The New Press, 2026), Julian Hattem explores how climate and environmental changes are reshaping patterns of human mobility. He convincingly demonstrates that the scale of these migrations...

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Feb 19, 2026 Book Review: “Meat” by Bruce Friedrich

Posted at 10:48h In Animals in Our World, Book Review, Food & Agriculture, Tales of WellBeing - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

In the early years of this century, I met Jason Matheny, an early advocate for cultured meat and the founder of the cultured meat company, New Harvest, in 2004. Matheny asserted that meat cultivated from the cells of cattle, pigs, chickens, and other farmed animals...

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Jan 25, 2026 Book Review: “Lab Dog” by Melanie D.G. Kaplan and “The Hidden Lives of Lab Animals: A Vet’s Vision for a More Humane Future” by Larry Carbone

Posted at 10:11h In Alternatives, Animals in Our World, Articles, Book Review, Tales of WellBeing - By Andrew Rowan, DPhil

These two books deal with the same topic, animal research and testing, in quite different ways. Both describe very personal explorations of the topic, grounded in the two authors' interactions with laboratory animals. Melanie Kaplan, author of Lab Dog and a journalist, adopted a beagle, Hammy,...

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Dec 22, 2025 Book Review: “A Street Cat Named Bob”

Posted at 03:00h In Animals in Our World, Articles, Book Review, Human-Animal Interaction, Tales of WellBeing - By Steven Hansch and Leslie Barcus

The true story, A Street Cat Named Bob, is an international best-seller about twin redemption: that of a homeless tabby street cat and a homeless Englishman who adopt each other and help one another heal, leading to celebrity status for both cat and human. The author,...

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Jul 31, 2025 Book Review: “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt

Posted at 10:58h In Articles, Book Review, Feel Better, People Well-being, Tales of WellBeing - By Steven Hansch and Leslie Barcus

In the Pixar movie, WALL-E, set a few hundred years in the future, humans have no direct contact with one another, are relatively helpless, and spend all day interacting only via television. As did many of my friends, I felt that the film got the...

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Apr 18, 2025 Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet (New York: Little, Brown and Spark)

Posted at 12:17h In Book Review, Education - Environment, Global Awareness, Tales of WellBeing - By Steven Hansch and Leslie Barcus

In her 2024 book, Not the End of the World, Hannah Ritchie (Scottish data scientist and researcher at the University of Oxford) begins by noting surveys that document how pervasively young people today feel that "humanity is doomed" and "the future is frightening." She responds...

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