Review by Booklist Review
This expansive book traces humanity's relationship with other species through scientific studies, philosophical, literary, religious, and historical writings, and personal anecdotes. Mostly using a Western viewpoint, Woolfson does not mince words in bringing together the ways in which humans have used animals to advance medical research, for entertainment, in ceremonies, for food, and for companionship. She begins by discussing evolution, then moves on to cave art and creation stories where animals are represented with exalted magical status, to the emergence of the idea of man's dominion over beasts, to the consideration of animals as products, not even sentient beings. Graphic in detailing animal abuse on factory farms for food and fur, hunting for sport, and medical experimentation, this is not a book for the highly sensitive. It documents the history of our relationship with, in particular our mistreatment of, the animals around us as well as a philosophical argument towards a more humane world.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Woolfson (Field Notes from a Hidden City) examines humanity's relationship with animals in this bracing investigation. In tracing "the development of the philosophical and religious ideas that have formed our views and how we've seen, described and portrayed other species," she considers animal breeding and their use as food, which are "closely related to the way we look at our own species and the extent to which we give ourselves the privileges apparently bestowed by history and by God," as well as their role as subjects of experiments. Elsewhere, Woolfson examines how "tradition" is used "to justify some of the most outrageous, discredited and damaging human behaviour," specifically the "persecution, the killing and infliction of suffering" on large numbers of animals. (Her chapter on the cruelties in the fur trade is especially harrowing.) Throughout, the descriptions can be brutal, but they are balanced with passages of beauty: "Red kites hunt above me... their feathers changed in an instant to flashes of copper taffeta, light as fragments of fine silk blown by the wind." It adds up to a fascinating look at how and why humans "consider ourselves superior" to other beings who live on the planet. With gorgeous writing and well-considered insight, this is a must for nature-minded readers. Agent: Jenny Brown, Jenny Brown Assoc. (Dec.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Recent developments, including climate change and widespread drought and flooding, have forced people to examine their relationships with the physical environment and the animal kingdom. In this work, popular and critically acclaimed British nature writer Woolfson (Field Notes from a Hidden City: An Urban Nature Diary) analyzes, in exquisite detail, numerous issues concerning the relationships between humans and animals and their many complexities. Ten chapters flow together well to provide a useful historical context, beginning with prehistorical societal norms and going up through debates on the morality of current related issues including guns, hunting regulations, factory farming, and the animal fur industry. Woolfson's writing style is highly academic; the book concludes with a comprehensive source list. However, her style is also very elegant and personal. Readers will find it familiar and will likely be uplifted. Stories of her personal relationships with animals, especially birds, are interspersed throughout, providing a beautiful framework. VERDICT This work has the capacity to forever change the thinking about humans' relationship to animals and to lead to constructive ways of dealing with issues for the betterment of both. It belongs on the shelves of all academic and large public libraries.--Steve Dixon
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A beautifully written reflection on the enduring conceit of human exceptionalism and the resultant harm caused to animals. Two suppositions guide this book. One is that all Earth's creatures possess "an indefatigable determinedness of self"--for this reason, they have a right to flourishing lives. Humans are neither behaviorally nor morally superior, nor are animals "a thing apart." Animals and humans are equal in moral standing: "If I have a soul, so do my birds," writes Woolfson, acclaimed author of Corvus: A Life With Birds and Field Notes From a Hidden City: An Urban Nature Diary. Our response to the "egregious, destructive, purposely and wantonly cruel" treatment that animals often receive from humans should be nothing short of indignation. The other supposition is that "our behavior towards the natural world" is shaped by the diverse ways that we interact with it. Woolfson weaves together a rich array of personal anecdotes, historical documents, novels, religious scripture, philosophical ruminations, and scientific studies to explore human-animal encounters: killing them for food, hunting them for pleasure, subjecting them to experiments, displaying them in museums, farming them for use in clothing, and living with them as pets. Woolfson is particularly concerned about arguments that defend human cruelty, as when "tradition" is called on to justify hunting whales and killing birds. Throughout, Woolfson's prose is lyrical--e.g., "the heavy hum of insects in scented air"; regarding vivisection, she recalls accounts "so graphic and disturbing that, like the whispered memories from prolonged and punishing sieges, peculiarly sanguinary battles or wanton massacres, they live to be revisited." While the author exercises restraint when it comes to justified outrage, she does not wholly resist: "Eric and Donald Trump Jr., enthusiastic 'big game hunters', were famously photographed with their kill--a leopard, an elephant, a buffalo. One of them holds up an elephant's severed tail. They smile, as they all do, bathed in the full glow of their malignant vacuity." Learned, compassionate, and disconcerting, this is a major contribution to the literature on animal welfare. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
