Our Kindred Creatures
How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals
1 of 1 copy available
Over just a few decades at the end of the nineteenth century, the United States underwent a moral revolution on behalf of animals. Before the Civil War, animals' suffering had rarely been discussed; horses pulling carriages and carts were routinely beaten in public view, and dogs were pitted against each other for entertainment and gambling. But in 1866, a group of activists began a dramatic campaign to change the nation’s laws and norms, and by the century’s end, most Americans had adopted a very different way of thinking and feeling about the animals in their midst.
In Our Kindred Creatures, Bill Wasik, editorial director of The New York Times Magazine, and veterinarian Monica Murphy offer a fascinating history of this crusade and the battles it sparked in American life. On the side of reform were such leaders as George Angell, the inspirational head of Massachusetts’s animal-welfare society and the American publisher of the novel Black Beauty; Henry Bergh, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; Caroline White of Philadelphia, who fought against medical experiments that used live animals; and many more, including some of the nation’s earliest veterinarians and conservationists. Caught in the movement’s crosshairs were transformational figures in their own right: animal impresarios such as P. T. Barnum, industrial meat barons such as Philip D. Armour, and the nation’s rising medical establishment, all of whom put forward their own, very different sets of modern norms about how animals should be treated.
In recounting this remarkable period of moral transition—which, by the turn of the twentieth century, would give birth to the attitudes we hold toward animals today—Wasik and Murphy challenge us to consider the obligations we still have to all our kindred creatures.
Cover painting: Peaceable Kingdom, 1834 (detail) by Edward Hicks. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 23, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593824696
- File size: 396518 KB
- Duration: 13:46:04
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from February 12, 2024
A colorful menagerie of characters fills this radiant history of the tumultuous first three decades (1866–1896) of America’s animal welfare movement. Wasik, editorial director of the New York Times Magazine, and veterinarian Murphy (coauthors of 2012’s Rabid) describe how after the Civil War, many antislavery activists turned their focus to animal cruelty. Their numbers included abolitionist lawyer George Thorndike Angell, who in 1868 founded the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In New York City, Henry Bergh’s activism helped pass municipal legislation in 1866 outlawing animal abuse, after which Bergh personally arrested carriage drivers, dog fighters, and even a sea captain transporting turtles under inhumane conditions. Other notable crusaders included Caroline Earle White, who in 1871 opened the first dog shelter, and ornithologist Florence Merriam Bailey, whose contributions to Audubon Magazine turned public opinion against massacring birds to collect feathers for fashion accessories. Wasik and Murphy’s multilayered narrative teases out how the era’s animal and human rights causes often intersected (the U.S. military’s mission to subjugate Native American tribes by exterminating the buffalo on which they depended drew reprimands from humanitarians and ASPCA members alike), and the profiles breathe life into the legal and moral campaigns. The result is a scintillating overview of how animals earned legal rights and moral sympathy in the latter half of the 19th century. Photos. Agent: Elyse Cheney, Cheney Agency. -
NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE editor Bill Wasik and veterinarian Monica Murphy offer a thorough account of how animals have been treated in America from the 1860s to the present day. In a fresh, young voice, narrator Tanis Parenteau delivers the authors' meticulous research on the care of animals, animal activists, and the controversies surrounding animal welfare. Parenteau's tone is clear and upbeat--perfect to recount the history of animal liberation. She projects the authors' compassion and smoothly explains how many of us have come to feel the way we do about animals. In this enlightening yet shocking work, Wasik and Murphy help listeners recognize the importance of respecting living creatures of other species. D.Z. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
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