For Your Holiday Gift Needs

I hope this isn't unseemly (or excessively so), but I want to plug a book by my fellow blogger, Angus Taylor, who hails from the Great White North (British Columbia). Four years ago, he published a book entitled Magpies, Monkeys, and Morals: What Philosophers Say About Animal Liberation (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1999). I don't recall how or why I acquired it, but when I read it, I was amazed. Everything I had been reading for the past twenty years was there, elaborated, analyzed, synthesized, and critically discussed. All the theories, all the arguments, all the topics. I was so taken by the book that I offered to review it for the prestigious journal Ethics. Here is my review (a book note, actually). Somewhere along the line I made contact with Angus, whom I didn't know, and here we are, blogging together.

A few months ago, the second edition of Magpies was published. Lo and behold, I'm quoted on the back cover, as if I were an important philosopher! The book's title has changed to Animals and Ethics: An Overview of the Philosophical Debate (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2003). Please acquire and read this book. Not because it will make Angus money (we don't do this stuff for money, I assure you), but because it will improve the quality of discussion and debate about the moral status of nonhuman animals. The book, as I say in my review, is beautifully written—and it's fair. Angus may have a view about the moral status of animals (which you can discern for yourself by reading his blog entries), but he doesn't argue for it in the book. The book is an overview, meant to educate. The bibliography, by the way, is superb. It will take you as deeply into the philosophical literature on animals as you care to wade.

Thanks, Angus, for applying your skills to this important topic. And thanks for joining this blog! Happy holidays, everyone.