AWI Quarterly Articles | Book and Film Reviews

Every year, humans deliberately and accidently dump more than 8 million tons of plastic into the ocean. It doesn’t go away. Some of it coalesces into massive gyres. Some is eaten by animals.

In this compelling work, distinguished philosopher of science and scuba diver Peter Godfrey-Smith writes of his experiences studying the minds of cephalopods, particularly octopuses and cuttlefish, and the minds of highly intelligent animals of other...

A Plea for the Animals is largely a compendium, providing summary descriptions of the horrible sufferings imposed upon animals resulting from factory farming, animal experimentation, trafficking in wildlife, and “animals in entertainment”—everything from shooting animals...

At its heart an ethnography, Eating the Ocean, by gender and culture professor Elspeth Probyn, is a challenging and unexpected contribution to the growing “food politics” genre. Although focused on questions concerning the sustainability of...

The Killer Whale Who Changed the World, by Mark Leiren-Young, tells a fascinating story. Everything has to start somewhere, and captive display of this or that species is no exception. In most cases, the first...

“I slowly became conscious of the animals’ point of view and recognized that much of what I was doing as a scientist did not square with my own moral standards.” The reader hasn’t gotten far...

Serendipity tells the story of ecologist James A. Estes’ work researching the unexpected collapse of sea otter populations in the Aleutians—specifically, how these declines played into a larger collapse of other coastal-living marine mammals in...

At a time when thousands of whales were being slaughtered each year, the release of the album Songs of the Humpback Whale in 1970 sparked a movement that eventually led to one of the great...

As a child, I enjoyed standing in the shallow water of creeks, lakes, rivers, and the ocean watching fish. Later, as a scuba diver, I plunged deeper, observing the behavior and interactions of a wide...

Friday Night Fighters is not for the faint of heart. Readers of mysteries know going in there will be a murder or two, but they may find the abuse of animals more disturbing. There is...