BEASTLY
A New History of Animals and Us
BEASTLY tracks the 40,000-year story of our paradoxical relationship with the animal world. From a flute carved from the radius of a griffon vulture’s wing to tardigrades in space to now. From our intimate connections to our distant disturbances.
The whole nation of Croatia awaits the return a single stork.
An Austrian zoologist watches a tropical freshwater fish make a decision. A man who cannot speak finds his voice in an encounter with a jaguar.
BEASTLY throws readers headlong into the mind-blowing glittering pageant of life and goes in search of our most revealing encounters with the animal world to show where we’ve come from and where we’re going. Beastly is the story of our changing kinship, reframing our understanding of what it is like to be an animal and what our role is as humans. Animals have shaped our minds, our lives, our land, our civilization, and they will shape our future.
Animals could save us, the paradox is, only we can save them.
BEASTLY: The 40,000-Year Story of Animals and Us
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION
A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2023: NATURE AND TRAVEL
A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST SUMMER BOOK OF 2023: ENVIRONMENT
A BBC HISTORY Magazine 2023 Books of the Year
MARK AVERY’S Books of the Year 2023
Stephen Moss’s 2023 Round-up of Nature Books
BEASTLY is published in the US by ABRAMS PRESS July 2023
BEASTLY: The 40,000-Year Story of Animals and Us
'An intriguing study of “the gargantuan story of our paradoxical relationship with the animal world.” KIRKUS REVIEWS
A July MUST READ in The NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB
Hottest Summer Reads of 2023 - KIRKUS REVIEWS
10 Nonfiction Books to Broaden Your Summer Reading - KIRKUS REVIEWS
Audio read by Pippa Hayward
An American ecologist hurls starfish out to sea and discovers how nature functions. A gorilla tells a joke. A Japanese yakuza gang has a shoot-out on the high seas over a cargo of sea cucumbers. A photograph of a boar, a girl and a candelabra make me write this book.
OTHER BOOKS
DADLAND
DADLAND won the 2016 Costa Biography Award.
Keggie Carew grew up under the spell of an unorthodox father. An undercover guerrilla agent during the Second World War, in peacetime he lived on his wits and dazzling charm. But these were not always enough to sustain a family.
As his memory began to fail, Keggie embarked on a quest to unravel his story once and for all. “Dadland” is that journey. It takes us into shadowy corners of history, a madcap English childhood, the poignant breakdown of a family, the corridors of dementia and beyond.
QUICKSAND TALES
Ever been talked into buying a camel? Or become a burglar by mistake? Or accidentally drugged a friend on a blind date? From the repercussions of a missing purse, to boiling a frog, or the holiday when the last thing you could possibly imagine happens, Keggie has been there.
She also has an enviable talent for recycling awfulness and turning embarrassment into gold. In prose that will make you laugh, wince and curl your toes, Keggie Carew shares her most embarrassing, awkward, uncomfortable, funny, true, terrible and all-too-relatable moments. You will be glad none of it happened to you.