About this item
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.
About the Author
Bill Wasik is a senior editor of Wired Magazine, and was previously a senior editor at Harper's Magazine. He has also contributed to McSweeney's and served as Editor of The Weekly Week. Mr. Wasik revealed himself in 2006 to be the inventor of the flash mob, having anonymously organized the first recognized examples in New York City during the summer of 2003. [1][2]Wasik is the author of And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture (Viking, 2009) . He is also the editor, with Roger D. Hodge, of Submersion Journalism: Reporting in the Radical First Person from Harper's Magazine (New Press, 2008) Bill Wasik is credited with introducing the notion of a flash mob in 2003, said in 2010 that he was surprised by the violence of some of the gatherings. He said the mobs started as a kind of playful social experiment meant to encourage spontaneity and big gatherings to temporarily take over commercial and public areas simply to show that they could. "It's terrible that these Philly mobs have turned violent," he said
