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.
Janet M. Davis is Associate Professor of American Studies, History, and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of The Circus Age: Culture and Society under the American Big Top, as well as the editor of Circus Queen and Tinker Bell: The Life of Tiny Kline. Her opinion pieces have been published in the New York Times and Newsday.