Our Kindred Creatures

How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals

De: Bill Wasik, Monica Murphy

Narrado por: Tanis Parenteau

A compassionate, sweeping history of the transformation in American attitudes toward animals by the best-selling authors of Rabid

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.

Multifaceted History of Animal Welfare Organizations

If you are interested in why we have organizations like the SPCA, RSPCA, and Humane Societies, this book looks at the individuals responsible for beginning such groups, along with the cultural, societal, and economic climates surrounding their development. A fascinating read that covers everything from stray dogs to carriage horses, from circuses to scientific research, from slaughterhouses to fashion, along with our ever-changing relationship with the animals in our society and what welfare really means. The book mostly focuses on 1860’s - 1890’s in the United States, with some exploration of European animal welfare development.

Do note that this book does not hold back from taking an unflinching look at historical practices regarding the treatment, killing, and testing upon of animals that some may find difficult to read. The book does not glorify or revel in these practices, but, given the historical nature of the book, these must be touched upon and understood in order to understand the positions and actions of animal welfare groups.

Great perspective

Great ability to link humanity and humane behavior to animal welfare, climate change and evolving norms of ethical conduct.