Review by Choice Review
Bulliet (history, Columbia Univ.) begins his book with the premise that modern societies exist in a state of postdomesticity in which people, while still yearning for meat, leather, and the benefits that domestic animals provide, know very little about what goes on behind the scenes to provide these benefits--probably a fair statement of fact. Bulliet, however, concludes that the transition from domesticity to postdomesticity is responsible for modern society's increasing fascination with fantasies involving sex and blood. He reasons that people living in close contact with domestic animals experience firsthand the violence associated with killing animals for food and have numerous opportunities to engage in bestiality, opportunities lost to them in a postdomestic world. Postdomestic societies, he argues, have resorted to producing media with greater violence and pornographic images in order to compensate for these lost opportunities. However, Bulliet offers no convincing evidence in defense of his thesis, and the book languishes as a series of trivialities and disjointed stories that lack objectivity. Several minor errors (the genus Homo is not capitalized; animal-rights proponent Tom Regan teaches at North Carolina State University, not the University of North Carolina) also detract from the book's scholarship. Summing Up: Not recommended. F. T. Kuserk Moravian College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
One only has to hear the hair-raising cry of a predatory coyote in a suburban backyard to know that humanity's relationship to the animal kingdom has undergone a sea change. From the first caveman to drag home a woolly mammoth carcass to today's confrontational anti-fur street demonstrations, human-animal relations have always been, and continue to be, more intricately entwined than society has comfortably acknowledged. Bulliet, professor of history at Columbia University, contends that this elemental interspecies dynamic has so evolved since the dawn of humanity to now be at a critical turning point. Just as our Victorian-era predecessors could not envision either the disconnect with which modern nonvegetarians acknowledge the source of the meat on their tables nor the extreme humanizing with which contemporary society treats its companion animals, so, too, will future generations view our present social, economic, and philosophical behaviors as equally quaint, self-serving, and, ultimately, destructive. A precisely researched, logically presented, and candidly intriguing apologia for humankind's inconsistent relationship with animals. --Carol Haggas Copyright 2005 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Columbia University historian Bulliet (The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization) admits he is not "a scientific researcher in the field of animal studies," but his book presents a provocative look at human-animal relations that offers a heady but highly readable mix of anthropology, archeology, zoology, environmentalism and philosophy. His main argument is that we live in an era of "postdomesticity" in which people live far away, "both physically and psychologically," from the animals whose food and hides they rely on. The bulk of the book is a look at various stages of human-animal relationships from antiquity to today, with remarkable explorations of related issues, such as the real-and nonnutritional-reason for human consumption of milk, and the way the industrialization of animal exploitation has caused a "spiritual and imaginative impoverishment of our outlook on the animal world." But what will surely cause the biggest controversy is Bulliet's fascinating argument that an "increasing fascination with fantasies of sex and blood" among post-WWII Americans is a subliminal reaction to the removal of animals other than pets-along with animal slaughter and animal sex-from their childhood experiences. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
