Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence

"The ideas in this book are so big, so fascinating and yes, so foreign, you are going to need people to talk to about them . . . This book is going to stretch you . . . Bridle has created a new way of thinking about our world, about being . . . Please read this important book. Read it twice. Talk about it. Tell everyone you know." --Brenna Maloney, The Washington Post

"Spanning millenniums, continents and academic disciplines, the scope of Bridle's curiosity and comprehension is immense, and the possibilities of how other intelligences might augment or complement our own are exhilarating to consider . . . There is something hopeful and even heartening in their faith that our current disastrous course might be shifted not only by new policies and technologies but also--and more fundamentally--by the power of new ideas." --Stefan Merrill Block, New York Times Book Review

"Bridle is a clear, artful writer and a sweeping thinker . . . [A] hopeful book, almost an antidote. It imagines technology not as something separate and menacing, but as part of a grand unfolding--an 'efflorescence', to use Bridle's word--along an evolutionary continuum of human and 'more-than-human' ways of being in the world." --Peter Christie, Post Magazine

"In making clear the patience, imagination and humility required to better know and protect other forms of intelligence on Earth, [Bridle] has made an admirable contribution to the dawning interspecies age."
--The Economist

"[A] fascinating survey . . . Bridle makes a solid case for his argument that 'everything is intelligent' and that all life on Earth is interconnected, and his notion that intelligence is 'one among many ways of being in the world' is well reasoned and convincing. This enlightening account will give readers a new perspective on their place in the world."
--Publishers Weekly

"An accessible but also technologically precise book . . . [Ways of Being] makes a remarkably compelling case for the universality of reason, the benefits to be reaped by acknowledging it, and the urgent need to do so given the reality of looming ecological collapse . . . A provocative, profoundly insightful consideration of forms of reason and their relevance to our shared future."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"There's a new breed of thinkers--people who've grown up through the collapse of an old order and are looking at the first shoots of a very different future. James Bridle is right at the front of this thinking. His writing weaves cultural threads that aren't usually seen together, and the resulting tapestry is iridescently original, deeply disorientating and yet somehow radically hopeful. The only futures that are viable will probably feel like that. This is a pretty amazing book, worth reading and rereading."
--Brian Eno

"James Bridle encourages you to widen the boundaries of your understanding, to contemplate the innate intelligence that animates the life force of octopuses and honeybees as well as apes and elephants. We humans are not alone in having a sense of community, a sense of fun, a sense of wonder and awe at the beauty of nature. Be prepared to re-evaluate your relationship with the amazing life forms with whom we share the planet. Fascinating, innovative and thought-provoking, I thoroughly recommend Ways of Being."
--Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace

"James Bridle's wonderful book will make you feel and think the power of knowing how like all other lifeforms we are. There is nothing more important."
--Timothy Morton, author of Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World

"James Bridle's brilliant Ways of Being shows the importance of listening to one another and our surroundings, and creating new forms of community."
--Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London

"A profound and elegant exploration of nonhuman intelligence that unfurls a wider, more expansive notion of thought itself. Bridle's view of the mind, embedded in a more thoughtful world, is a revelation."
--Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun