Promotional Information

For the first time, a historian of science draws evidence from across the world to show how humans and other animals are astonishingly similar when it comes to their feelings and the ways in which they lose their minds.

About the Author

MIT PhD in the history of science, Laurel Braitman has written for Pop Up Magazine, The New Inquiry, Orion, and a variety of other publications. She is a TED Fellow and an affiliate artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts. Laurel lives on a houseboat in Sausalito, California, and can be reached at AnimalMadness.com.

Reviews

'[A] fascinating contribution to studies of animal behaviour'
*The Age*

'Braitman wants us to take animals seriously—to see them as individuals with life histories and psychologies as dramatic and intense as our own… [She] has an absolute, not a comparative, sense of the animal soul.'
*The New Yorker*

‘This is a marvelous, smart, eloquent book—as much about human emotion as it is about animals and their inner lives. Braitman’s research is fascinating, and she writes with the ease and engagement of a natural storyteller.’
*Susan Orlean, bestselling author of Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night, and The Orchid Thief*

‘Animal Madness is the sanest book I've read in a long time. Laurel Braitman irrefutably shows that animals think and feel, and experience the same emotions that we do. To deny this is crazy—which is why this fine book should be required reading for anyone who cares about healing the broken inner lives of both people and animals.’
*Sy Montgomery, author of The Good Good Pig*

‘In this compelling and provocative book, Braitman shows us sides of the animal mind few have imagined, and in doing so, opens our eyes anew.’
*Virginia Morell, author of Animal Wise*

'[A] stimulating mix of rigorous scientific research and moving tales about mental fragility and resilience in the animal kingdom.'
*The Age*