One of David’s favorite books last year was Michelle Nijhuis’ Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, a fascinating history of the way human knowledge about species extinction (and survival) has evolved. There was a time, she writes, that scientists (and human culture at-large) simply didn’t understand the way animals lived and died. Most people figured that even creatures that seemed to be getting scared with find a way to come back. But then in the twentieth century things changed, and this book is the story of people like Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, and other scientists set out to learn the truth and preserve the creature that make the planet so wonderful. It’s a great book, and in this episode of Bibliography, Nijhuis came on to chat about the books that have inspired her—as an individual, as a scholar, and as a parent—over the years.
Michelle Nijhuis