Alive

Praise for Alive:

“An ambitious examination of the wisdom of bodies … . I struggle to think of a book for whose subject I have felt more sympathy and excitement: its turn to the body, its trenchant critique of scientific reductionism and misguided metaphors… . This book is an invitation to the reader … to abandon the harmful readings that we have inherited, and sidestep our own self-destruction.”
—The Guardian

“The difference between not-alive and alive is perhaps the universe’s biggest mystery. If like me, you’ve wondered what aliveness is, how it happens, why it works and how it takes charge of itself. In Alive, Melanie Challenger has worked her magic to enlighten us in this extraordinary expedition into life itself.”
—Carl Safina, PhD; author of Alfie and Me

“For centuries western thought has been corralled by a particular notion of what life is, one that takes its model from machines… . Enter renowned naturalist and bioethicist Melanie Challenger, whose new book, Alive, turns this way of thinking on its head. Written with equal parts wit, eloquence, and erudition, Alive introduces us to a world teeming with agents, each one inseparable from its embodied form, and all united by the quality shared by all life: to define its own purpose and find ways to fulfill it.”
—William Egginton, author of The Rigor of Angels

“Alive is a profound, provocative and moving meditation on the question of what makes living organisms so special and remarkable. By insisting that life is not an abstract but rather an embodied property, Melanie Challenger offers a vision of the living world that can restore to it the wonder and reverence it deserves.”
—Philip Ball, author of How Life Works

“In this beautifully written and awe-inspiring book, Melanie Challenger celebrates the brilliance of Aristotle’s view of life as embodied, bringing it to the forefront of current scientific knowledge and beyond. Yet she goes further, inspiring us to face dying as an inescapable gift of having lived, and, in so doing, teaching us the value of living purposeful lives.”
—Marcelo Gleiser, author of The Dawn of a Mindful Universe

“Alive hits like a shock to the body: bracing and brilliant. Melanie Challenger is an alert and fascinating guide through tricky terrain, leading us from ancient philosophical academies to cutting-edge biology labs to make a startling argument about what it is to live and what it means to be alive.”
—Jonathan Blake, author of Children of a Modest Star

“Challenger delivers an ambitious examination of what it means to be alive… . Rigorously argued, this is a difficult but rewarding treatise for those up to the task.”
—Publishers Weekly

”[Challenger] is at her best when delving into the intricacies of life as a sequoia tree or a bee or making her readers question their assumptions of life as it is subjectively experienced… . An ambitious, provocative examination of a slippery topic.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Melanie Challenger writes, researches, and broadcasts on the history of ideas, the history and philosophy of science, and the relationship between humans and the living world. She is the author of How to Be Animal: What It Means to Be Human, among other works, and host of The Psychosphere podcast. She is also an award-winning poet and librettist for opera and oratorios, and a National Geographic Explorer. Melanie is internationally active in bioethics, codirector of Animals in the Room, and vice president of the RSPCA.

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