The premise of Being a Beast is as misleading as it is wacky: a man tries to live as a badger, then as an otter, a fox, a deer and a swift, in order to understand what it's like to experience the world as a wild animal. But beneath the surface, this series of philosophical essays represents nature writing of the highest order: probing, intellectual, alert, funny and astonishing.
Charles Foster is an Oxford fellow and self-described "writer, traveller, veterinarian and barrister." His publications range from law books to explorations of the spiritual (The Sacred Journey) and the scientific (The Selfless Gene). Being a Beast will rank him with Muir, Leopold and McPhee. Foster's tone is blithe, his style loose and poetic. He doesn't write sentences so much as create little idea nests: "Learn old tunes; eat food that comes from where you are. Sit in the corner of a field hearing. Put in wax earplugs, close your eyes, and smell. Sniff everything, wherever you are: turn on those olfactory centers. Say, with Saint Francis, 'Hello, Brother Ox,' and mean it." To read Foster is to spend quality time with the eccentric polymath uncle you haven't seen since childhood and whom only you know how to appreciate.
He's interested in what it's like to be a badger and an otter, yes, but as he burrows, swoops, sniffs and chews his way through a cross-section of our kingdom, Foster writes like a man alive, intimately concerned with the nature of things. --Zak Nelson, writer and editorial consultant