Strangely enough, histories of the way humans have perceived animals over the centuries are few and generally quite daunting (Francis Kling-ender’s Animals in Art and Thought to the End of the Middle Ages [MIT Press, 1971], for example, is full of interesting material but is extremely large, hard to come by, and—as the title admits—only takes one up to the Middle Ages). One of the best overall views of the way humans have looked at and treated animals, however, is also one of the shortest. Linda Kalof’s Looking at Animals in Human History (Reaktion Books, 2007) manages to tell the essentials of the story (or at least the Western side of it) in under two hundred very clearly written pages. The book’s bibliography is also a treasure trove of references to other useful works. Also extremely worthwhile is The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings (Berg Publishers, 2007), edited by Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald. Richard W. Bulliet’s Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships (Columbia University Press, 2005) is an academic but readable—and often provocative—tour of the animal-human relationship from prehistory to the present, with an emphasis on the unprecedented distance that now separates us from the animals whose lives and bodies all of us, to some degree, rely on for our own existence. The book provided me with an especially large number of facts and insights that were crucial in writing this book. Matt Cartmill’s A View to a Death in the Morning: Hunting and Nature Through History (Harvard University Press, 1996) is a survey of what hunting has meant to human beings from the days of Gilgamesh all the way up to Bambi. Because hunting was originally such a profoundly spiritual activity, and has retained spiritual implications even down to the present day, the book is, not surprisingly, rich with insights into the nature of the human-animal relationship.
For an understanding of the universe of primitive humankind, especially in its relationship to the natural world, the many works of Paul Shepard provide a rich source of ideas, many controversial but all interesting. See especially his The Others: How Animals Made Us Human (Island Press, 1997) and Coming Home to the Pleistocene (Island Press, 2004). The poet Clayton Eshleman’s Juniper Fuse: Upper Paleolithic Imagination & the Construction of the Underworld (Wesleyan University Press, 2003) is an adventurous, unorthodox, but extremely rewarding narrative of his decades-long quest to understand the spiritual and psychological underpinnings of Paleolithic cave art, and its insights were a great help to me in writing this book. Joseph Campbell, though often criticized these days for occasional shortcomings in scholarship, remains the most heroically energetic teller of the history of humankind’s mythic imaginings, and his writings are full of useful insights into the spiritual aspects of the human-animal relationship. Especially useful is the first volume in his Masks of God series, Primitive Mythology (Penguin, 1991). David M. Guss’s anthology The Language of the Birds: Tales, Texts, & Poems of Interspecies Communication (North Point Press, 1986) is an exceptionally rich and useful source of original material, while John Bierhorst’s The Way of the Earth: Native America and the Environment (William Morrow, 1994) is a masterful survey of specifically Native American ideas and attitudes toward nature.
For those who want to find out firsthand what Christian thinkers from Aquinas to Saint Francis have had to say about the spiritual stature of animals (or their lack thereof), nothing beats Andrew Linzey and Tom Regan’s Animals and Christianity: A Book of Readings (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2007). For an in-depth examination of the ins and outs of the biblical view of animals and the implications of that view today, Linzey’s Animal Theology (University of Illinois Press, 1995) is an excellent source of insights, as are Stephen H. Webb’s On God and Dogs: A Christian Theology of Compassion for Animals (Oxford University Press, USA, 2002) and Norm Phelps’s The Dominion of Love: Animal Rights According to the Bible (Lantern Books, 2002). Matthew Scully’s powerful and disturbing Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003) is more focused on current issues of animal rights and human responsibilities, but contains many valuable insights into how the modern view of animals, and modern habits of treating and mistreating them, developed over history.
Because of the centrality of nature to Far Eastern spirituality, most books on Eastern religions will have something—and usually quite a lot—to say about the Far Eastern appreciation of nature for its own sake. Daisetz T. Suzuki’s classic Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton University Press, 1970), for example, contains lengthy chapters on nature as it appears through the lens of Japanese spiritual thought. For insights into what world religions including but not limited to Christianity have had to say about the spirituality of animals and nature, the works of Seyyed Hossein Nasr are unmatched. See especially his Religion and the Order of Nature (Oxford University Press, 1996), and Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man (Kazi Publications, 2007). Oriental Mythology, the second volume of Campbell’s Masks of God series, provides much useful material on the Eastern traditions’ views of nature, as do many of the works of Mircea Eliade. See especially Eliade’s Patterns in Comparative Religion (Bison Books, 1996).
Though it took me a while to find them, a number of books on the soul-status of animals actually had been written before the sudden rise in their numbers in the early nineties. In addition to the titles included in the main body of this book, mention should also be made of Animal Ghosts—A Survey of Animal Extrasensory Perception and Animal Survival of Death by Raymond Bayless (University Books, 1970), a short but interesting collection that also boasts an introduction by one of the most brilliant investigators of the spiritual implications of paranormal phenomena, Robert Crookall.