Free the Animals

Told as a thriller, Free the Animals is a classic work of radical popular storytelling. A classic in the mold of Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang.

First published in 1992, this thirtieth-anniversary edition by animal rights icon Ingrid Newkirk has been revised and updated with a new foreword by academy award-winning actor Joaquin Pheonix, and an afterword by PETA’s renowned senior scientist Dr. Emily Trunnell, who describes whether and how the experiments you read about in this book have changed (or have not) over the last three decades.

Free the Animals is the story of Valerie, a twenty-three-year-old police officer in Montgomery County, Maryland, whose world is turned upside down when she learns about the abuses of animals in laboratories. The book describes how this law-abiding woman comes to challenge the system by taking direct action and examines why ordinary people are moved to do extraordinary things on behalf of animals. Full of fascinating characters, vivid descriptions, and thrilling incidents, and rich with details on what it means to live life on the run from the law (and agents provocateurs), Free the Animals is not only a classic for our times but a compellingly relevant examination of our cruelty to other animals.