Amid the escalating hostilities of today's world, F. G. Bailey returns to the state of Orissa in the eastern India of the 1950s to consider what held a diverse collection of people together and what drove them apart. The last of Bailey's books about Orissa, The Need for Enemies, offers a ground-level view of regional politics in South Asia in the years following independence. In doing so, the book analyzes political problems that are of universal concern: incivility in public life, the inescapable dilemma of duty always in tension with interests, public consensus on what is right and good giving way to a babel of inconsistent moralities, and, not least, true believers contesting realists who see virtue in compromise. A portrait of Orissa and its leaders in 1959, the book is also a treatise on political morale. As Bailey tells the story of political and social turmoil in postcolonial India, a tale rich in ethnographic detail, he follows Orissa's politicians through a maze of inconsistencies, and makes clear the dangers that beset political cultures in a complex world of multiple competing alternatives. There is a need to simplify, Bailey suggests, and an ever present risk of making the image too simple.

Medieval Bestiaries were fantastically popular and influential. They were so predominant that ripples from their impact still affect us today after roughly a thousand years. Bestiaries were based on the belief that morality could be divined by studying nature, particularly animal behavior. They offer a tantalizing contemporary design despite a past full of crucial impediments. The medieval versions are fraught with fabrications. Behavioral observations typically relied on lore, often tainted by the need to affirm some batty moral dictum of the era. Even worse, they produced inapt corollaries that often undermined the authors' professed sacred scripture. Rehabilitated by today's robust sciences, this bestiary illustrates intricate connections between physiology and behavior with the help of animals that have graciously exhibited their everyday escapades to explicitly expose our evolved nature. In this work, clear parallels arise between animal behaviors and modern political traits which are taken up one creature at a time. The root causes of our own political divisiveness emerge as we journey through biology and neuroscience following the lead of animals behaving (and misbehaving) naturally. This voyage not only guides us to many political solutions, but arms readers with a framework to devise their own solutions for restoring sanity to civilization.

A preeminent medievalist presents a wonderful catalog of real and fanciful beasts, including the manticore, griffin, phoenix, amphivius, jaculus, and many other exotic animals. White's witty, erudite commentary on scientific and historical aspects enhances this survey of proto-zoology on which science is based and pre-scientific perceptions of the earth's creatures. 128 black-and-white illustrations.

From medieval bestiaries to Borges’s Book of Imaginary Beings, we’ve long been enchanted by extraordinary animals, be they terrifying three-headed dogs or asps impervious to a snake charmer’s song. But bestiaries are more than just zany zoology—they are artful attempts to convey broader beliefs about human beings and the natural order. Today, we no longer fear sea monsters or banshees. But from the infamous honey badger to the giant squid, animals continue to captivate us with the things they can do and the things they cannot, what we know about them and what we don’t. With The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Caspar Henderson offers readers a fascinating, beautifully produced modern-day menagerie. But whereas medieval bestiaries were often based on folklore and myth, the creatures that abound in Henderson’s book—from the axolotl to the zebrafish—are, with one exception, very much with us, albeit sometimes in depleted numbers. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings transports readers to a world of real creatures that seem as if they should be made up—that are somehow more astonishing than anything we might have imagined. The yeti crab, for example, uses its furry claws to farm the bacteria on which it feeds. The waterbear, meanwhile, is among nature’s “extreme survivors,” able to withstand a week unprotected in outer space. These and other strange and surprising species invite readers to reflect on what we value—or fail to value—and what we might change. A powerful combination of wit, cutting-edge natural history, and philosophical meditation, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is an infectious and inspiring celebration of the sheer ingenuity and variety of life in a time of crisis and change.

From yaks and vultures to whales and platypuses, animals have played central roles in the history of British imperial control. The contributors to Animalia analyze twenty-six animals—domestic, feral, predatory, and mythical—whose relationship to imperial authorities and settler colonists reveals how the presumed racial supremacy of Europeans underwrote the history of Western imperialism. Victorian imperial authorities, adventurers, and colonists used animals as companions, military transportation, agricultural laborers, food sources, and status symbols. They also overhunted and destroyed ecosystems, laying the groundwork for what has come to be known as climate change. At the same time, animals such as lions, tigers, and mosquitoes interfered in the empire's racial, gendered, and political aspirations by challenging the imperial project’s sense of inevitability. Unconventional and innovative in form and approach, Animalia invites new ways to consider the consequences of imperial power by demonstrating how the politics of empire—in its racial, gendered, and sexualized forms—played out in multispecies relations across jurisdictions under British imperial control. Contributors. Neel Ahuja, Tony Ballantyne, Antoinette Burton, Utathya Chattopadhyaya, Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller, Peter Hansen, Isabel Hofmeyr, Anna Jacobs, Daniel Heath Justice, Dane Kennedy, Jagjeet Lally, Krista Maglen, Amy E. Martin, Renisa Mawani, Heidi J. Nast, Michael A. Osborne, Harriet Ritvo, George Robb, Jonathan Saha, Sandra Swart, Angela Thompsell

'A Nietzschean Bestiary' gathers essays treating the most vivid & lively animal images in Nietzsche's work, such as the howling beast of prey, Zarathustra's laughing lions, & the notorious blond beast.

Amid the escalating hostilities of today's world, F.G. Bailey returns to the state of Orissa in the eastern India of the 1950s to consider what held a diverse collection of people together and what drove them apart. The last of Bailey's books about Orissa, The Need for Enemies, offers a ground-level view of regional politics in South Asia in the years following independence. In doing so, the book analyzes political problems that are of universal concern: incivility in public life, the inescapable dilemma of duty always in tension with interests, public consensus on what is right and good giving way to a babel of inconsistent moralities, and, not least, true believers contesting realists who see virtue in compromise.