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.'"