An American Trilogy : Death, Slavery, and Dominion on the Banks of the Cape Fear River ISBN: 9780786745395 Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Hachette Books Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time Subjects: Social Science; Agriculture; Philosophy;
Industrial hog farming joins slavery and massacres of Native Americans on the list of Christianity's sins in this muddled manifesto. Animal-rights litigator Wise (Rattling the Cage) investigates the titular North Carolina riverbank, where Smithfield Foods' pig slaughterhouse now occupies land once worked by slaves and, earlier, inhabited by Indians before Europeans evicted them. The point of his ham-fisted and somewhat offensive comparison is that, in contrast to the Indians' fauna-friendly religion, Christian teachings license a cruel "dominion" over animals, just as they once justified slavery and violence against indigenous peoples. Wise's disorganized expose of the pork industry lumps genuine outrages together with banalities; he seethes when pork scientists treat pigs as statistics rather than as individuals and frowns on paintings of pigs at the World Pork Expo. Worse, his thesis that religious beliefs drive the mistreatment of animals is overstated-it was spiritual malaise more than economic interests, he speculates, that caused Native Americans to start overhunting deer for colonial deerskin export markets. Readers who root around a bit will find more cogent discussions of animal-rights issues elsewhere. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Steven M. Wise, J.D. , has practiced animal law for over twenty years and has taught at the Harvard, Vermont, and John Marshall law schools. He is President of the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights, which he founded in 1995. The author of Rattling the Cage , praised by Cass Sunstein as "an impassioned, fascinating, and in many ways startling book" ( New York Times Book Review ), and Drawing the Line , which Nature called "provocative and disturbing," he has been profiled nationally by such publications as the New York Times , the Washington Post , and Time magazine.
