Man I will never stop being disappointed by pop nonfiction books. Pests started off so strong and felt like it was not only going to dig into misconceptions about animals that are often considered dangerous or harmful, but even connect that back into topics like race, class, and social hierarchy.

This issue of categorization is inherently political, not just in the concept of anthropocentrism but also in the questions it raises about borders, hierarchy, and state power. Examining the idea of categorizing any living thing into neat boxes almost perfectly sets itself up for discussions of systems of power, and there is a coherent book here, but it never quite reaches its potential.

Essentially, it feels like Brookshire had the right question, and eventually arrived at a defensible answer, but she spent most of the book demonstrating the premise rather than interrogating it. The result, then, is an abundance of information without the analytical framework necessary to make any of it meaningful.

Throughout the book, Brookshire sticks to the surface, often building up toward a real analysis and then backing away before it gets too heavy. I do have an understanding that pop nonfiction has to make concessions in some places for accessibility or wide appeal, and I didn't expect a political manifesto from this light reading book about rats and pigeons, but damn Brookshire doesn't give the reader anything to chew on.

This is most blatant in the many times Brookshire gestures at colonialism but positions it as a remnant of the past, a tragic era that sadly cannot be helped in the present day, rather than a living system that's constantly at work and must be deconstructed in order for the anthropocentric hierarchy to truly be left behind. There are also plenty of even surface-level discussions about capitalism, racism, even ableism that could have been had that Brookshire just sort of shrugs at.

Brookshire gestures toward these systems but never names them outright. Except when it's time to critique China of course, and she makes sure to spend many paragraphs talking about Mao's desire for domination and nationalist communist supremacy. It's fine to critique China but when everything else is downplayed for giggles and trivia tidbits, and the first time anything resembling true politics is named is in the context of critiquing China, it makes the selective analysis glaringly obvious.

On top of the lack of real systemic critique, the bare minimum inclusion of indigenous wisdom feels shoehorned in rather than a truly embodied part of Brookshire's argument. This refusal to do the difficult work of real analysis is most clear in her chapter about elephants, in which she details all of the ways colonialism interferes with Kenya's ability to coexist with the local elephants.

The chapter builds toward the argument that equal weight should be given toward "all sides" of the issue - Western perceptions of the animal must be considered because Kenya relies on tourism, while local Kenyan perspectives should probably be considered because it's their land. Brookshire lands on the conclusion that the issue is "complicated" and that "there's no solution that will make everybody happy". Hello! We are ignoring a colonialism-shaped elephant in the room.

There was also so much graphic animal death in this book, from poisoning to decapitation to hunting to animal experimentation to forced sterilization. While I think it's fair to expect some of that in a book like this, each chapter being so emphasized around the methods humans are using to "cull" populations made Brookshire's argument feel like a sad shake of her head; like mass death of these animal populations is a sad but inevitable (and therefore the only) way forward.

To be fair, once she reaches the conclusion of the book she makes her stance very clear. I appreciated that her argument doesn't dissolve into the easy ecofascist answer that "humans are the true pests", nor the flimsy theory that humans should just leave the natural world alone to its own devices. I agree that the reality of the situation lies somewhere in the complicated in-between, that humans must change their ways in order to coexist with nature rather than seeking to dominate it.

The problem is that, while Brookshire eventually made her argument clear, she treated it as a conclusion instead of a method. This thesis should have been the lens through which every animal was examined, but instead, the animals were examined first and the lens was handed to the reader at the end.

Without the thesis being actively developed through each chapter, there's not enough analytical scaffolding to participate in an actual argument. Instead, it feels like being held hostage while someone infodumps a bunch of fun facts about genetics and animal history. While this can be fun in its own right, it's not what I particularly enjoy from a nonfiction work.

Ultimately, Pests is fine as a pop science book if you want some light reading about animals socially considered to be "pests" and a bit of pondering about how these categories come about, but as an argument with bite, it feels intellectually thin despite having so much potential for deep analysis.

heartbreaking and well told

if you like short stories and feeling feelings you should definitely check this one out!