Book review of MADNESS: The Deep Driver of Our Climate Crisis by Jim Mason, 2025

Madness by Jim Mason

www.JimMason.info/madness

A PORTRAIT of the AUTHOR as a YOUNG FARMER

Allured by its provocative title, “Madness,” and by its cover depicting Munch’s iconic “Scream,” I could not resist poking my nose into this book. Yet such a title and cover will likely repulse as many readers as it might attract. That might be the author’s intention. Because this book is not for the faint of heart.

Mostly a memoir, “Madness” recounts Jim Mason’s harrowing childhood experiences while growing up on a family dairy farm. Not only did he witness firsthand the routine cruelties involved in raising and killing farm animals, he also involuntarily participated in those rites of passage expected of all boys raised on family farms. If you question how life on a dairy farm can be harrowing, then you’ve not read any of Mason’s journalism nor his two previous books.

In contrast to large-scale factory farming that is today’s norm, you might think of the small family farms of the past as bucolic and idyllic. If so, you’re a misinformed consumer who’s been duped by the meat and dairy industries into believing that farm animals, then as now, have historically been raised in bucolic paradises, where the sheep are tenderly herded by Timmy and Lassie, where the chickens scamper playfully outside the front porch as they peck near Grandpas’ feet, where the cows are lovingly milked by Timmy’s Mom, and where the calves, male and female alike, are suckled and nurtured by Elsie the Cow.

The author has devoted his life to dispelling those myths through his public speaking and writing. This book, however, is less an exposé of animal agriculture’s gruesome realities and more a chronicle of his lifelong campaign to expose them.

While he is angry and mad that the myths persist, his is not the Madness of this book’s title. Mason is a peaceful and rational man. The book’s vague title surely could have been more specific. By Madness is meant Depravity. Madness of what exactly? The answer awaits in a phrase on page 55, “The Madness of the Agrarian Worldview.” Likewise, the irrelevant subtitle should have been, “Lessons from My Family Farm.” As an accurate description of the book, that phrase does appear on the cover.

Thus, two threads are woven throughout the book. Arranged in alternating chapters, they are “Lessons from My Family Farm” and “The Depravity of the Agrarian Worldview.” The first thread comprises his memoir, the second thread provides a refresher course in the history narrated and the theory advanced in his 1993 book, “An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature.”

Still alive and kicking (ass) at age 84, Mason has led a fascinating and fruitful life. His backstory is more diverse than you might imagine. Attorney, soldier, author, scholar, researcher, investigator, dishwasher, husband, and yes, husbandry farmer. But he neglected to mention in his memoir one very important piece of his puzzle: Editor. He was the founding editor of the influential news monthly, “The Animals’ Agenda.” Launched in 1979, it was the first magazine devoted to animal rights.

I read all three of his previous stellar books: “Animal Factories” (1990, co-authored with the illustrious Peter Singer); “The Way We Eat” (2006, also co-authored with Peter Singer); and “An Unnatural Order” (1993). The first book moved me to action. His third book stirred my mind. “Animals’ Agenda” won my heart. Every month when the latest issue arrived in my mail, I cast aside all my other reading material, namely books, newspapers, and magazines, even my other cherished magazine, “Mad.” (Is there a common theme here?) When Mason eventually moved on from “Animals’ Agenda,” I well recall his editorial announcing his departure. He stated that he had grown weary of shuffling papers all day long. He is one busy and restless dude.

This equally stellar book nevertheless is marred by four shortcomings: its vague title, its misleading subtitle, and the chaotic formatting of the print edition. Despite its minor flaws, this book is still well worth reading. Yet a fourth flaw exists in a chapter that should be skipped.

That superfluous chapter on pages 11–18, “Mason Farm, 1940s,” appears early in the book where it’s bound to discourage readers from proceeding further. Its detailed history of Mason’s family tree could be of interest only to his surviving family members. The author may have felt the need to portray his ancestors as hardworking and honest pillars of the community in order not to cast them as ghoulish monsters for the routine atrocities they inflicted upon their farm animals. After all, such cruelty was routine for all farmers of past generations. As though a prescient warning, that chapter was not listed in the Table of Contents. While that omission may have been accidental, all nine pages of that slow-read chapter should have been omitted, too. A solution is simple. Skip that chapter!

Another reader advisory: the page layout of the print book suffers from conversion directly from writing software rather than from an intermediary book design software. The micro-font is too tiny compared to the overly spacious leading between lines of print. Also, most of the sidebar quotes are misplaced. As a print-on-demand book, its inking is thin, and most of the left-hand pages so faint as to strain my eyes. While that could be unique only to my copy, such a fault is common among other print-on-demand books. Here, too, a solution is simple. Rather than the printed book, purchase the Audiobook or the eBook!