For the Love of Animals: The Rise of the Animal Protection Movement

Book is well-written. Very interesting history about animal protection movement. Anyone who is has a serious interest in animal welfare will want to add it to their collection.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is a fascinating, disturbing, moving look into the history & rise of the animal protection movement in 18th century & early 19th century Britain. The author is expert in saving this tale from what could be a very dry, tedious history--and infuses it with a lively cast of characters & their stories, from an outspoken, philosophizing Duchess, to a French lawyer who represented rats on trial, to a Lord's beloved pet leeches, and a poet's odes to his cat. She also includes poetry, law, social history, paintings and sermons to further give the reader a fully dimensional scope of this movement & the culture it emerged from. Her careful research also keeps it from being overly mushy & preachy---you come away with a nuanced understanding of the shift in people's views & relationships with animals, the horrific condition of animals which spawned some of these shifts in thinking, and how these changes became translated into bills proposed in parliament & eventually, law. That aside, it's just an incredibly moving story. It's a book that makes you think, both philosophically & practically, about animal protection & rights long after you've finished reading, how they relate to the same issues today, and you come out cheering on behalf of stormy Irish politicians & preachers who dared speak & write on behalf of "brute" animals to the ridicule of their peers. It also reveals the smaller, but no less courageous, acts of many and the animals who inspired them.