Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace

Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace - Paperback

$19.99
$19.99
Skip to product information
Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace
  • Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace
Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace - Paperback

Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace - Paperback

by Carl Safina
$19.99
$19.99

Book Overview

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2020

"In this superbly articulate cri de coeur, Safina gives us a new way of looking at the natural world that is radically different."--The Washington Post

New York Times bestselling author Carl Safina brings readers close to three non-human cultures--what they do, why they do it, and how life is for them.

A New York Times Notable Books of 2020

Some believe that culture is strictly a human phenomenon. But this book reveals cultures of other-than-human beings in some of Earth's remaining wild places. It shows how if you're a sperm whale, a scarlet macaw, or a chimpanzee, you too come to understand yourself as an individual within a particular community that does things in specific ways, that has traditions. Alongside genes, culture is a second form of inheritance, passed through generations as pools of learned knowledge. As situations change, social learning--culture--allows behaviors to adjust much faster than genes can adapt.

Becoming Wild brings readers into intimate proximity with various nonhuman individuals in their free-living communities. It presents a revelatory account of how animals function beyond our usual view. Safina shows that for non-humans and humans alike, culture comprises the answers to the question, "How do we live here?" It unites individuals within a group identity. But cultural groups often seek to avoid, or even be hostile toward, other factions. By showing that this is true across species, Safina illuminates why human cultural tensions remain maddeningly intractable despite the arbitrariness of many of our differences. Becoming Wild takes readers behind the curtain of life on Earth, to witness from a new vantage point the most world-saving of perceptions: how we are all connected.
ISBN9781250787613
Author Carl Safina
PublisherHolt Paperbacks
GenreHobbies & interests and Education
FormatPaperback
PublishedApril 2021
LanguageENG- English
Pages400
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Nature Nonfiction Science

1% fer Each of the Seven Seas

Every purchase sends 7% of our profits to The Ocean Cleanup. No fine print, no opt-in — just how we sail.

Whoever Ye Be, Welcome Aboard

Queer lit, music, art, philosophy, fiction — stories for every kind of soul. Come as ye are, matey.

More by Carl Safina

Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe

Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe - Hardcover

Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe - Hardcover

By Carl Safina

About Carl Safina

Carl Safina's work has been recognized with MacArthur, Pew, and Guggenheim Fellowships, and his writing has won Orion, Lannan, and National Academies literary awards and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals. He has a PhD in ecology from Rutgers University. Safina is the inaugural holder of the endowed chair for nature and humanity at Stony Brook University, where he co-chairs the steering committee of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and is founding president of the not-for-profit Safina Center. He hosted the 10-part PBS series Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina. His writing appears in The New York Times, National Geographic, Audubon, Orion, and other periodicals and on the Web at National Geographic News and Views, Huffington Post, and CNN.com. Beyond Words is his seventh book. He lives on Long Island, New York.

You may also like