Riveting, Scientifically-Rigorous, Gushingly-Poetic, Mournful, and Vibrating

With his new book, Environmental Journalist, Ben Goldfarb, will turn you too into an animist

Book Cover, A. A. Norton

I first heard about this book when I was reading the author’s previous text, Eager, about beavers. My initial response was, “do I really want to read a book about roadkill?” Eager is a book that will change your life; Goldfarb makes a bulletproof case for beavers being nothing short of revolutionary for the planets ecology and hydrology (and hence their restoration is imperative for the future of the Civilization Project). You can only come down from such heights, right?

Wrong. Goldfarb has done it again. He has taken a seemingly mundane, possibly even dry, subject — roads — and turned it into a riveting, scientifically-rigorous, gushingly-poetic, mournful, and vibrating tribute.

First, I should establish what this book is actually about: animism.

In this case: kinship with our animal and insect friends — from turtles, to grizzlies, to Monarch butterflies, to ant eaters. I can only assume that for Goldfarb, it was a journalistic choice to leave this cornerstone of his narrative implicit as opposed to explicit. Why? Possibly because Western…