A fully revised and updated version of the classic work on the origins of animal agriculture and our longstanding contempt for and hatred of nature and animals.
In 1993, Jim Mason, journalist, advocate, and pioneering figure in the contemporary animal advocacy movement, published An Unnatural Order—a sweeping overview of the origins of our destruction of the natural world and its creatures, from the dawn of agriculture to the present day. Now fully revised and updated to reflect greater awareness of, and urgency regarding, the climate crisis, An Unnatural Order offers an expansive overview of what has changed (both for good and for ill) and what has unfortunately remained the same.
His message is clear: until we grapple with the question of the animal, and our relationship with animality and the natural world, we will not be able to confront the consequences of our perpetuation of environmental destruction, biodiversity collapse, and our alienation from the Earth and one another. As brilliantly polemical and richly descriptive as it was when it was published almost three decades ago, this new version of An Unnatural Order is sure to excite a passionate debate about our role in either saving the ecosystems upon which all species (including our own) rely, or bringing it all to an end.
“Jim Mason’s classic work on the ancient origins of our wish to harm animals and others made a huge impact on me when I read it years ago. Now revised and updated, An Unnatural Order retains its power to provoke, inspire, and galvanize us toward action.”—Peter Marsh, author, The Supremacist Syndrome
“Mason’s slant on history—the human–animal orbit—is clever and subversive.”—Kirkus Reviews
“An eloquent, important plea for a total rethinking of our relationship to the animal world. Mason analyzes the West’s ‘dominionist’ worldview, which exalts humans as overlords and owners of other life. . . . His powerfully argued manifesto will change many readers’ attitudes toward hamburgers, animal experimentation, hunting, and circuses.”—Publishers Weekly
