Not for the Faint of Heart: Animals Books for October

Warning: Do not read if you are squeamish about innards, scared of being controlled by parasites and other real life zombies, or are not ready for a good cry!

Stripped Bare: The Art of Animal Anatomy by David Bainbridge 

 

ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS: Featuring a wealth of breathtaking color illustrations throughout, Stripped Bare is a panoramic tour of the intricacies of vertebrate life as well as an expansive history of the peculiar and beautiful ways humans have attempted to study and understand the natural world. Stripped Bare brings together some of the most arresting images ever produced, from the earliest studies of animal form to the technicolor art of computer-generated anatomies. David Bainbridge draws on representative illustrations from different eras to discuss the philosophical, scientific, and artistic milieus from which they emerged.

Includes:

• anatomical drawings of Leonardo and Albrecht Dürer in the era before printing
• Jean Héroard’s cutting and cataloging of the horse during the age of Louis XIII
• the exotic pictorial menageries of the Comte de Buffon in the eighteenth century
• anatomical illustrations from Charles Darwin’s voyages
• the lavish symmetries of Ernst Haeckel’s prints
• and much, much more

 

Plight of the Living Dead: What Real-Life Zombies Reveal About Our World—and Ourselves by Matt Simon

 

TERRIFYING AND FASCINATING: Zombieism isn’t just the stuff of movies. It’s real, and it’s happening in the world around us, from wasps and worms to dogs and moose—and even humans. In Plight of the Living Dead, science journalist Matt Simon documents his journey through the bizarre evolutionary history of mind control. Along the way, he visits a lab where scientists infect ants with zombifying fungi, joins the search for kamikaze crickets in the hills of New Mexico, and travels to Israel to meet the wasp that stings cockroaches in the brain before leading them to their doom.

Laika’s Window: The Legacy of a Soviet Space Dog by Kurt Caswell

 

TRAGIC AND IMPORTANT: Laika began her life as a stray dog on the streets of Moscow and died in 1957 aboard the Soviet satellite Sputnik II. Kurt Caswell examines Laika’s life and death and the speculation surrounding both. Examining the depth of human empathy—what we are willing to risk and sacrifice in the name of scientific achievement and our exploration of the cosmos, and how politics and marketing can influence it—Laika’s Window is also about our search to overcome loneliness and the role animals play in our drive to look far beyond the earth for answers.

Also recommended by Fahrenheit: Soviet Space Dogs (2014)