About this item
Farley Mowat, bestselling author of Never Cry Wolf, A Whale for the Killing, and The Dog Who Wouldn't Be, calls Seal of Slaughter his most important work...a book he felt compelled to write after witnessing the drastic decline in the rich diversity of wildlife along the Northeastern seaboard.Farley Mowat does not tell of the extinction of one species. His unforgettable narrative tells of the devastation of all different types of animal life from a region where the forests once teemed with game, where the fish could be scooped up with baskets...and where the Eskimo curlew fell in clouds of thousands to sportsmen who used them for target practice before turning their guns to clay pigeons.With his unique storytelling gift, Farley Mowat details why some creatures, such as the gentle penguin-like great auk, have vanished forever.
About the Author
Farley McGill Mowat (1921-2014) was born in Belleville, Ontario. The author of more than forty books, he was a popular and distinguished naturalist and conservationist whose internationally acclaimed novels, books for young readers, and memoirs have been translated into fifty-two languages and have sold more than seventeen million copies. Mowat's oeuvre includes People of the Deer; Lost in the Barrens, a recipient of Canada's Governor General's Award; The Boat Who Wouldn't Float; A Whale for the Killing; The Snow Walker; and Virguga: The Passion of Dian Fossy.
Mowat is most widely known for his 1963 book Never Cry Wolf, which recounts his adventures as a biologist on a solo mission in 1946 to study Arctic wolves in the Keewatin Barren Lands in northern Manitoba. The book is credited with changing the stereotypically negative perception of wolves as vicious killers. New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof named Mowat's The Dog Who Wouldn't Be, first published in 1957, one of the best children's books of all time.
Mowat served in World War II from 1940 to 1945, entering the army as a private and emerging with the rank of captain. He began writing professionally in 1949 after spending two years in the Arctic. He was an inveterate traveler with a passion for remote places and peoples.
Mowat was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1981. In 2002 the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society named a ship for him in recognition of his activism against the whaling industry.
