In wildlife conservation, rewilding refers to restoring habitats and creating corridors between preserved lands to allow declining populations to rebound. Marc Bekoff, one of the world's leading animal experts and activists, here applies rewilding to human attitudes. Rewilding Our Hearts invites readers to do the essential work of becoming reenchanted with the world, acting from the inside out, and dissolving false boundaries to truly connect with both nature and themselves. In wildlife conservation, rewilding refers to restoring habitats and creating corridors between preserved lands to allow declining populations to rebound. Marc Bekoff, one of the world's leading animal experts and activists, here applies rewilding to human attitudes.
"This inspiring book is impossible to put down. Page after page bristles with stories, examples, challenges....Like other great sages [Bekoff] offers hope and encouragement to take small steps; it is tiny acts of compassion that count and bring a deep joy to those who live out rewilding."
- Celia Deane-Drummond, professor of theology, University of Notre Dame
"A practical way for people to reconnect with natural landscapes and animals through understanding and compassion."
- Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, United Nations Messenger of Peace
"I wish the ideas of Rewilding Our Hearts would become an integral part of all scientific conferences, university conservation courses, animal shows on TV, children's books, etc."
- George Schaller, PhD, wildlife biologist and vice-president of Panthera
"Marc Bekoff is one of the leading compassionate reformers of our time....This is a book for anyone who is interested in nurturing themselves and healing our alienated relationships with each other, other animals, and the beautiful planet we all call home."
- Lori Gruen, PhD, professor of environmental studies, Wesleyan University
"Dr. Marc Bekoff's latest work of art - of compassion in action - is a deeply philosophical, extraordinarily accessible, and powerfully composed message for our times....A simply brilliant work!"
- Michael Charles Tobias, president, Dancing Star Foundation
"Marc Bekoff is a leading voice in the effort to ignite a rewilding social movement grounded in love, compassion, and the recognition that we are inhabitants of a magnificent planet that is calling us home."
- Eileen Crist, coeditor of Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth
"Rewilding is a trendy term for the revival of an ancient concept: showing respect for the natural world, including the other animals sharing it. Bekoff ... reminds us that in a sense we remain great apes and cannot operate outside nature and emphasizes that while humanity may be the dominant species, it is not the most important ecologically. ... Verdict: Bekoff's perspective is far from the North American norm, but his arguments are strong. Readers may find themselves agreeing with some of the author's points and may even do some soul searching about our treatment of animals."
- Library Journal
"In this wise and passionate book, Marc Bekoff brings a lifetime of scientific research and deep personal reflection to bear on our deepening environmental crisis. In his characteristically insightful and engaging style, Bekoff advocates for compassion as the basis of new understandings of ourselves and prompts us to reimagine the kinds of relationships that we might yet have with the rest of our living world. Rewilding Our Hearts is a tragically honest and yet powerfully uplifting response to the challenges of our time."
- Thom van Dooren, environmental philosopher, University of New South Wales, Australia, and author of Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction
"As one has come to expect from Marc Bekoff, this is a wonderful book of scientific stories about animal minds, consciousness, and emotion. But Rewilding Our Hearts goes beyond this, showing how wi
