Knox County Public Library invites the public to join Dr. Todd Freeberg for a discussion of Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel by Carl Safina, Wednesday, June 28, noon to 1:00 in the East Tennessee History Center auditorium. Books Sandwiched In is sponsored by the Friends of Knox County Public Library. Attendees may bring lunch. Drinks are available to purchase.

"How intelligent are non-human animals? Do they have self-awareness? Do they have deep relationships with one another in ways that echo our own relationships? These kinds of questions have been asked by humans for centuries," Freeberg says. "A number of recent books attempt to answer these questions, including The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal, and Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith. One of the best of this recent flurry of books is Beyond Words by Carl Safina. As described by The New York Times, 'Dr. Safina is a terrific writer, majestic and puckish in equal measure, with a contagious enthusiasm.… Dr. Safina draws out haunting resonances between animal lives and our own.'"

Dr. Freeberg is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Tennessee, with an adjunct appointment in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. He graduated from the University of Illinois in the Department of Ecology, Ethology, and Evolution, and received his PhD from Indiana University in the Department of Biology. Freeberg is interested in vocal communication, with studies focused on the development, function, and evolution of vocal signals and signaling in songbird species. He takes comparative approaches in the research, to try to uncover ecological and social influences on systems of vocal signals.

Book Sandwiched In will continue July 26, when Jackie Clay, Executive Director, Free Medical Clinic of Oak Ridge, and Ronni Chandler, Director of Project Grad Knoxville, return to continue the discussion of Rac(e)ing to Class: Confronting Poverty and Race in Schools and Classrooms by Richard A. Milner IV. On August 23, Dr. Victor Erik Ray, UT Department of Sociology, will lead a discussion of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi.