Graeme Gibson’s latest book is a splendid compilation of artwork of and literature about predators. A companion to 2005’s The Bedside Book of Birds, this new volume does what all good books should: it encourages readers not only to read (and reread) it, but also to seek out other books. Gibson provides an open door to the literary world of beasts – the big, beautiful ones that are sadly disappearing.

The book’s argument is straightforward. Gibson believes that contact with nature is precious and necessary. Nature heals. And he is adamant that human intervention in the food chain has caused irreparable harm. Sport hunting diminishes both hunter and prey, and the human predilection for killing the best animals as trophies is antithetical to nature’s balance, whereby predators cull the weak and strengthen the surviving gene pool. Hunting for the thrill of the kill is wasteful and unnatural.

The book’s selections, both literary and artistic, range widely over time and geographical origin, and reveal Gibson’s erudition. Most of the pieces are by men, which is unsurprising since men are traditionally afforded the role of hunter. Iconic Canadian poems about the devastating collision between human beings and other animals, such as Earle Birney’s “The Bear on the Delhi Road” and Alden Nowlan’s “The Bull Moose,” fit well with complimentary selections from abroad, such as George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant,” William Blake’s “The Tyger,” and Beowulf.

Gibson’s miscellany is full of works that can be enjoyed over and over. A chunk of Haruki Murikami’s short story “All God’s Children Can Dance,” passages from works by Barry Lopez, or an excerpt from Kailash Sankhala’s Tigers! merely whet the appetite for more of the same.

The Bedside Book of Beasts is divided into eight chapters, each with an introduction in which Gibson eloquently presents the topic, then generously allows his dozens of selections to speak for themselves. Much space is devoted to wolves, coyotes, big cats, and human hunters. Given the current state of the global ecosystem, it’s hard to reject Gibson’s view that people have messed things up horribly, even while creating remarkable technologies and objects of beauty and intellectual pleasure. Such as this book.