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A review by terrypaulpearce
Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel by Carl Safina
2.0
A shame, this one. It was at its best when it commented on the animals' lives and left you to draw your own conclusions about their inner lives. But far too often it rambled far, far off course. A good editor could've cut half, and the folksy style didn't resonate with me at all. For somebody who repeatedly claimed to be following the science, it strayed dangerously close to woo a few times, and argument after argument boiled down to suppositions and assumptions.
It's not really a very scientific book at all, which left travelogue and experience as to what it should have focused on -- and again, when it did that well, it had some great passages on the lives of wolves and elephants... just enough to get me to finish it.
If you're interested in the broad aim of this book but want something much better written, I strongly recommend Frans de Waal's 'Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?'.
It's not really a very scientific book at all, which left travelogue and experience as to what it should have focused on -- and again, when it did that well, it had some great passages on the lives of wolves and elephants... just enough to get me to finish it.
If you're interested in the broad aim of this book but want something much better written, I strongly recommend Frans de Waal's 'Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?'.