Hunting is an exceedingly complicated subject, with outspoken voices on both sides claiming equal righteousness. However, there is a huge range between the extremes, in which thoughtful
discourse on the issue becomes an examination of what it means to be alive, as well as the ethics of taking an animal's life. When the voices are those of writers and philosophers both past
and present, some of whom hunt and some of whom don't, the debate becomes enormously satisfying and far more subtle.
In ON KILLING, commissioned essays by Dan O'Brien, Pam Houston, Robert F. Jones, Louis Owen, Dan Gerber, John Jerome, Mary Clearman Blew, LeAnne Schreiber, and others, are juxtaposed with
classic excerpts from Leo Tolstoy's snipe hunting scene in Anna Karenina, Ernest Hemingway's fictional debate on killing animals versus killing men in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Erich Maria
Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, and Jose Ortega y Gasset's pivotal essay "Ethics" from Meditations on Hunting. Also included are works by Jim Harrison, Isak Dinesen, Jim Corbett,
Aldo Leopold, John James Audubon, Roderick Haig-Brown, Beryl Markham, and more.
ON KILLING is not merely an anthology of pieces written on hunting; it is a rich dialogue, reflecting the broadest spectrum of ideals. For thinking hunters, fishermen, naturalists,
philosophers, and anyone interested in challenging discourse, ON KILLING is a book not to be missed.
