The Gospel of Kindness
Animal Welfare and the Making of Modern America
Janet M. Davis
Reviews and Awards
CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2017
Winner of the Presidents' Book Prize of the Society of Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
"Enrich[es] our understandings of human-animal relations in American history, as well as force[s] us to revisit and reconsider larger historiographical assumptions about agency and causation....[Davis] deftly weaves the history of animal welfare in with that of other social movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries....Davis's final three chapters...are her most pathbreaking, for they move beyond the U.S. frame and put American animal advocacy in conversation with global dialogues about our young nation's empire taking place first in the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico under U.S. military occupation, and later in India and Spain via Protestant missionaries. Here, Davis is particularly skillful at synthesizing existing animal studies and global histories with her own close readings of animal advocacy texts."--Karen A. Rader, American Historical Review
"Davis, associate professor of American Studies at University of Texas-Austin, combines extensive research, excellent scholarship, and clear, engaging prose to produce a valuable addition to the histories of American nineteenth-century reform, imperialism, women's activism, and animal welfare."--Lynn M. Lansdown, Journal of American Culture
"The Gospel of Kindness goes much further to expose the heretofore unexamined animal dimensions of American citizenship and civilization."--Andrea L. Smalley, The Journal of American History
"If you only read one book this summer, make it this one."--Equus Magazine
"The Gospel of Kindness brilliantly chronicles the growth of American animal protectionism from the Civil War to the onset of World War II. Janet Davis examines shifts in the concern for the treatment of animals in the context of the great social movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries-Protestant revivalism, the abolition and temperance movements, and international expansionism. From the origins of urban animal shelters to conflicts over bullfighting in Texas, this is the definitive history of an important yet neglected chapter in the development of the animal welfare movement in the United States."--Hal Herzog, author of Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It Is So Hard To Think Straight About Animals
"A breakthrough work in historical scholarship concerning the humane movement and concern for animals. Davis forges new ground in her illumination of a transnational animal protection ethic and her analysis of its meaning and significance both within and outside the United States. The Gospel of Kindness is a work of tremendous relevance for a contemporary world in which animal protection values are spreading more deeply and ever farther."--Bernard Unti, author of Protecting All Animals: A Fifty-Year History of The Humane Society of the United States
"The Gospel of Kindness shows how champions of animal welfare in the United States repeatedly framed their advocacy within the language of US benevolence and uplift. Well-written and thoroughly researched, Davis's fine history of the US animal protection movement, global in scope, illuminates the contested politics of empire, citizenship, gender, race, and religion."--Emily S. Rosenberg, author of Transnational Currents in a Shrinking World, 1870-1945