Boddice, a historian, presents a history of attitudes and behaviors towards animals in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain, chosen as it was the site of the origins of the humane movement. He considers ideas about cruelty and humanity, the impact of Jeremy Bentham and the motivations for legislating on the issue of animal cruelty, how new laws against animal cruelty arose, their social and cultural consequences, masculinity and animals in sporting culture, the emergence of the human as animal and the influence of Darwin's Origin of Species, and the vivisection debate. He does not provide a history of vegetarianism or meat eating, meat markets, or animal slaughter. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)