Bad Hare Days by Irish animal welfare campaigner John Fitzgerald is certainly the best book on the theme of animal rights/environmentalism/activism I have read yet.

The author tells of his struggle to seek protection for the Irish Hare, an endangered species in his country and also one subjected to atrocious cruelty in the so-called "sport " of hare coursing, in which greyhounds are set after the timid creatures (called jack rabbits in the USA) for the amusement of humans.

The author doesn't dwell on the bloodsport issue alone, however. The book is mainly about the impact the campaign itself has had on himself, his family, and other campaigners.

In his own case, he was living and working in a district where hare coursing was deemed acceptable and looked upon by a lot of people as a proud tradition.

He paid a heavy price for his peaceful campaigning, which consisted of letter-writing to newspapers and picketing of coursing events.

He was assaulted and severely bullied in the workplace and then had to contend a heavy-handed police backlash when militant activists of the Animal Liberation Front began sabotaging hare coursing venues and illegally releasing hares destined for baiting.

Though not involved in this underground activity, the author was arrested and interrogated many times, and he gives a compelling blow-by-blow account of this ordeal in the book.

Fitzgerald recalls the ups and downs of campaigning on a most contentious ethical issue, and his memoir is alternately shocking, profoundly moving, and uproariously funny.

Anyone remotely interested in the animal rights/welfare debate/cause or who has ever taken up a difficult cause and suffered as a result...will love this book.

Let me know what you think if it you get around to reading it.

Bad Hare Days is published by Olympia Publishers.