Other Nations: Animals in Modern Literature

by Tom Regan (Editor), Andrew Linzey

The world's first anthology designed to employ the power of fiction to illuminate our moral relationship with animals, Other Nations boasts a superb collection of writings from writers of great distinction―including Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, and Alice Walker. By organizing the literary pieces according to the means by which human beings relate to the animals discussed―as companions, as sources of food, as objects of sport and entertainment, and as subjects in scientific research―preeminent scholars Tom Regan and Andrew Linzey enable readers to relate these texts (and these animals) to their own experiences and to the manifold issues now discussed in public forums. While the editors believe the time is ripe for radical change in the way human beings see and treat animals, this collection nonetheless presents various and contrary viewpoints, leaving readers to come to their own moral conclusions.

Contents:
*** Preface by Andrew Linzey
*** Introduction by Tom Regan

I Humans Encounter Other Animals
*** "The Snake" by Stephen Crane
*** "Snake" by William Saroyan

II Other Animals Encounter Humans
*** "Arabesque--The Mouse" by A. E. Coppard
*** "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell
*** "The Jack Rabbit Drive" by Robert McAlmon

III Other Animals as Companions
*** "Pilling the Cat" by Cleveland Amory
*** "Lying Doggo" by Bobbie Ann Mason
*** "My Life as a West African Gray Parrot" by Leigh Buchanan Bienen

IV Other Animals as Prey
*** "The Pleasures of Hunting" by Ernest Hemingway
*** "Sketches from a Hunter's Album" by Ivan Turgenev
*** "Hunting at Sea" by Laurens van der Post
*** "The Gray Chieftain" by Charles A. Eastman

V Other Animals as Tools
*** "The Dead Body and the Living Brain" by Oriana Fallaci
*** "Doctor Rat" by William Kotzwinkle
*** "Terminal Procedure" by Margaret Pabst Battin

VI Other Animals as Food
*** "The Slaughterer" by Isaac Bashevis Singer
*** "It Was a Different Day When They Killed the Pig" by Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro
*** "How to Make a Pigeon Cry" by M. F. K. Fisher
*** "Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers" by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
*** "Am I Blue?" by Alice Walker

VII Epilogue
*** "The Limits of Trooghaft" by Desmond Stewart

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2010

About the author

Tom Regan was an American philosopher who specialized in animal rights theory. He was professor emeritus of philosophy at North Carolina State University, where he taught from 1967 until his retirement in 2001.

Regan was the author of numerous books on the philosophy of animal rights, including The Case for Animal Rights (1983), one of a handful of studies that have significantly influenced the modern animal rights movement. In these, he argued that non-human animals are what he calls the "subjects-of-a-life", just as humans are, and that, if we want to ascribe value to all human beings regardless of their ability to be rational agents, then to be consistent, we must similarly ascribe it to non-humans.

Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slim volume assembles some of the best bits of writing on animals in English, with excerpts from writers like Stephan Crane, George Orwell, Laurens van der Post, or Alice Walker. Most of the stories are gripping and horribly realistic in depicting animal suffering at human hands. The empathy is often unrestrained. The result is painful to read, and that is its purpose. The aim is not to reason against cruelty, but to make us loathe it.