'Pig Years' and 'What the Chicken Knows' consider the interior worlds of farm animals

What can our relationships with other animals teach us? That’s the question naturalist Sy Montgomery addresses in her memoir, How to Be a Good Creature. She explores the lessons about life and love she learned from various animals who touched her life, from a tiny pinktoe tarantula in French Guiana to a beloved 750-pound pet pig named Christopher.

In our guide, we’ll examine how the wisdom and companionship of animals helped Montgomery find her calling as a traveler and nature writer, appreciate animals and people in new ways, and cultivate love and community. These animals taught her how to be more curious, compassionate, friendly, loving, and much more—in other words, they taught her how to be a good creature. We’ll also discuss some of the science and history behind our relationships with other animals, along with ways you can apply the lessons Montgomery learned to your life.

Do animals have an inner life, and experience conscious thoughts and feelings like humans do? A growing number of scientists say the evidence suggests they do—even species whose brains and nervous systems don’t look much like ours. This article examines the evidence and what it might mean for how we treat them.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan explores how we answer the question, “What should we eat.” It traces four types of food chains from a food’s origin to the dinner table. He focuses on how food production in the U.S. has evolved from small farms to a mass production system of huge corn and animal farms operated on factory-based principles. This system has produced cheap, tasty but less healthy foods, while making it difficult for us to make better choices by obscuring our food’s origins and ingredients.

We have a viable alternative in true organic food, but to make better choices and influence change we must do the work of educating ourselves and giving up our addiction to convenience and unhealthy foods.

Maid is Stephanie Land’s memoir of her struggle to make ends meet as a single mom by working as a housekeeper and relying on government assistance. Since Maid was published, it has been adapted into a popular, critically acclaimed Netflix miniseries.

Beyond being a personal narrative, Maid is also a broader social commentary on the American “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality. Land does backbreaking labor under difficult conditions while caring for her daughter and studying to get a college degree—yet circumstances beyond her control keep her mired in poverty. From domestic abuse to flawed government policies, the obstacles that Land must overcome are overwhelming. By the end of the memoir, while she hasn’t yet fully escaped her situation, she has begun to make a better life for herself and her daughter.

Our guide provides background information, research, and statistics on the key themes, bringing context to Land’s personal experience as it relates to the larger population of Americans experiencing poverty and abuse.

What can our relationships with other animals teach us? That’s the question naturalist Sy Montgomery addresses in her memoir, How to Be a Good Creature. She explores the lessons about life and love she learned from various animals who touched her life, from a tiny pinktoe tarantula in French Guiana to a beloved 750-pound pet pig named Christopher.

In our guide, we’ll examine how the wisdom and companionship of animals helped Montgomery find her calling as a traveler and nature writer, appreciate animals and people in new ways, and cultivate love and community. These animals taught her how to be more curious, compassionate, friendly, loving, and much more—in other words, they taught her how to be a good creature. We’ll also discuss some of the science and history behind our relationships with other animals, along with ways you can apply the lessons Montgomery learned to your life.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan explores how we answer the question, “What should we eat.” It traces four types of food chains from a food’s origin to the dinner table. He focuses on how food production in the U.S. has evolved from small farms to a mass production system of huge corn and animal farms operated on factory-based principles. This system has produced cheap, tasty but less healthy foods, while making it difficult for us to make better choices by obscuring our food’s origins and ingredients.

We have a viable alternative in true organic food, but to make better choices and influence change we must do the work of educating ourselves and giving up our addiction to convenience and unhealthy foods.

Do animals have an inner life, and experience conscious thoughts and feelings like humans do? A growing number of scientists say the evidence suggests they do—even species whose brains and nervous systems don’t look much like ours. This article examines the evidence and what it might mean for how we treat them.

Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and author, Dawkins argues that biology’s focus on organisms is misguided, and that life should instead be considered from the point of view of individual genes trying to perpetuate themselves through countless generations.

Though the book begins with the premise that biologists think too large (organisms instead of genes), it ends with the surprising idea that they think too small—that genes have much greater impacts on the world than simply creating bodies to inhabit. Dawkins offers compelling arguments for why we should think about biology as ranging from the microscopic to the wider world.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan explores how we answer the question, “What should we eat.” It traces four types of food chains from a food’s origin to the dinner table. He focuses on how food production in the U.S. has evolved from small farms to a mass production system of huge corn and animal farms operated on factory-based principles. This system has produced cheap, tasty but less healthy foods, while making it difficult for us to make better choices by obscuring our food’s origins and ingredients.

We have a viable alternative in true organic food, but to make better choices and influence change we must do the work of educating ourselves and giving up our addiction to convenience and unhealthy foods.