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A review by acejolras
Beastly: The 40,000-Year Story of Animals and Us by Keggie Carew
emotional
informative
slow-paced
2.0
What an absolute slog. It was marketed as pop science but was really a series of meandering essays about human damage to the environment and the evils of factory farming. There was no real organization or throughline, so it felt more like an unedited collection of passionate blog posts.
The author clearly has an agenda, which she does at least acknowledge up front, but her anti-science bias (especially in a post-COVID world) made me skeptical of all her claims. I get her thrust that we know bad things are happening and tackling them on an emotional level is a valid way of trying to affect change, but she dismisses scientific study at every turn. It’s clear she thinks of herself as An Artist and has no time for the structure of scientific research, but as someone interested in science, this meant I really had little time for her. But she conveniently had no problem citing scientific studies when they were available to support her points.
The author clearly has an agenda, which she does at least acknowledge up front, but her anti-science bias (especially in a post-COVID world) made me skeptical of all her claims. I get her thrust that we know bad things are happening and tackling them on an emotional level is a valid way of trying to affect change, but she dismisses scientific study at every turn. It’s clear she thinks of herself as An Artist and has no time for the structure of scientific research, but as someone interested in science, this meant I really had little time for her. But she conveniently had no problem citing scientific studies when they were available to support her points.