First published in Great Britain by Canongate Books Ltd 2021

The indelible stamp -- The dream of greatness -- The civil war of the mind -- A stranger to creation -- The journey-work of the stars -- Coda : on the loveliness of being animal

"Our troubled relationship with being an animal-and why we need a better one." Humans are the most inquisitive, emotional, imaginative, aggressive animals on the planet. And we also happen to be the only animal that doesn't like to think it's an animal. So how well do we really know ourselves? 'How to Be Animal' argues that at the heart of our existence is a profound struggle with being animal. We possess a psychology that seeks separation between humanity and the rest of nature, and we have invented grand ideaologies to magnify this. As well as piecing together the mystery of how this mindset evolved, Melanie Challenger examines the wide-reaching ways in which it affects our lives. We travel from the origin of Homo sapiens through the agrarian and industrial revolutions, the age of the internet, and on to the futures of AI and human-machine interface. Blending nature writing, history, and moral philosophy, How to be Animal is both a fascinating reappraisal of what it means to be human and a robust defense of all that is rich and rewarding about being an animal. -- taken from back cover