In Gilded Age America, people and animals lived cheek-by-jowl in environments that were dirty and dangerous to man and animal alike...

An interview with Christopher Ketcham

de Waal offers a fascinating exploration of the rich emotional lives of animals,,.

Some people insist that culture is strictly a human accomplishment. What are those people afraid of?

A life shared with pets brings many emotions....

What makes song sparrows, Verdi, medieval monks, and minstrelsy part of the same taxonomy?

An interview with Candace C. Croney

Do nonhuman animals have phenomenally conscious mental states?

Barnard explores the more-than-human entanglements between empires and the creatures they govern...

Why do Americans eat so much beef?

Alizart offers us a surprising new portrait of the dog as thinker―a thinker who may perhaps know the true secret of our humanity...

Gagné explores how relations of reciprocity between land, humans, animals, and glaciers foster an ethics of care in the Himalayan communities of Ladakh...

Barstow explores the tension between Buddhist ethics and Tibetan cultural norms to offer a novel perspective on the spiritual and social dimensions of meat eating...

Why do we put other animals in the various categories we do, and treat them in the various good and bad ways that we do?

Animal Intimacies is a path paving work that combines theoretical innovation and playfulness, ethnographic depth, and profound attunement to capturing the aspirations and tragedies of everyday life through the art of narrative...

Peter Sahlins’s 1668: The Year of the Animal in France (Zone Books, 2017) is a captivating look at the role of animals in court and salon culture in the first decades of Louis XIV’s reign in France.  Focusing on the years in and around 1668,

Not all city dwellers are bipedal, according to Frederick L. Brown, author of The City is More Than Human: An Animal History of Seattle (University of Washington Press, 2016). The history of Seattle, and all cities,

Monica Mattfeld’s Becoming Centaur: Eighteenth-Century Masculinity and English Horsemanship (Penn State University Press, 2017) explores the complex relationship between men and their horses, and reflects upon how these interactions defined a man’s gen...

Kathleen McAuliffe‘s This is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society (Mariner Books, 2017) unveils the world of parasites. From the influence of parasites on the ability to transform rats brains to be easil...

John Hadley’s Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals (Lexington Books, 2015) presents a novel approach to addressing habitat and biodiversity loss: extending liberal property rights to wildlife.

Here in the U.S. we’ve just celebrated the Fourth of July, with its parades, fireworks, and, of course, cook-outs. If you’re like me, the smell of a grilling burger can make you salivate from across the yard.

Urban zoos are both popular and imperiled. They are sites of contestation, but what are those contests about? In his new book, American Zoo: A Sociological Safari(Princeton, 2015), ethnographer David Grazian tracks the competing missions of zoos as sit...

Anita Guerrini‘s wonderful new book explores Paris as a site of anatomy, dissection, and science during the reign of Louis XIV between 1643-1715. The journey begins with readers accompanying a dead body to sites of dissection across the city,

Federico Marcon‘s new book opens a fascinating window into the history of Japan’s relationship to its natural environment. The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan (University of Chicago Press,

Homelessness and stigma go hand in hand, and nowhere is this more apparent than pet ownership among the homeless.  From nasty looks to outright insults  – ” you can’t even take care of yourself, you have no business having a dog!