Rating: 
Summary: More rights for animals, less for human citizens
Review: The purpose of the book seems to be to argue for animals' rights, but whereas animals deserve great considerations of us, they have no more rights than they have responsibilities (neither are truly possible for them). While pleading to our own inner fears (pain, death) and our tender, nurturing feelings towards pets (by association, all animals) as four-legged "children", the thrust of the animal rights cult-ure seems more to be set upon the diminishing of citizens' (4th Ammendment) property rights, while helping to nurture and grow an invasive system of legalized intrusion into peoples' home life and businesses. Sadly, both children and animals, as the ostensible beneficiaries of "victims' rights" laws and legal actions, are mere pawns in a vicious game in which they are too frequently the ultimate losers. Subsequent abuse and even death of animals and even children in foster homes and "shelters" is carefully hidden and covered up in a pattern of secrecy, while the public is left to believe that everyone lives "happily ever after", which is NOT always the case.
Rating: 
Summary: Engaging the Issues with an Open Mind
Review: These words came to mind again and again when I read this groundbreaking book about law, animals, and ethics --- engaging, creative, connecting, disciplined, encompassing, compassionate. Because the book weaves together many different modern concerns, it will challenge any reader's understanding of the nature of law and ethics generally, but especially as they relate to any living being, human or otherwise. And its readable style will force you to grapple with its many descriptive accounts and prescriptive suggestions. If you are of a conservative, traditional bent, you will find that, in one most basic and generic sense, the book can be seen a conservative argument. It honors traditional values such as dignity, liberty, and equality by examining them with an open mind. On the other hand, if you are of a liberal bent, you will resonate with the author's disciplined critique of the inherited paradigms that dominate contemporary American law. This is a book that any informed person should read, and it would make a good gift for those acquaintances who have strong opinions one way or the other about nonhuman animals or the current climate in which humans are re-thinking their relationship to the earth and its creatures.
Rating:
Summary: Boldhearted and Enlightened
Review: This book is going to upset people. It disturbs the neat-and-tidy dogmatically unexamined distinctions and presuppositions the human species has comforted itself with. Egos will be provoked, neurotic delusions of human specialness will rise to the surface. (Case in point: The readers from Boston, and Woodland Hills, Ca.; both typical representatives of the cowardly herd-mentality which guarantees the limitless defilement of our fellow-beings, justifying their lack of intelligence and monstrous spiritual backwardness by means of a bogus religious anthropocentrism.)
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic. I loved reading this book!
Review: This book reiterates what we all know: Animals feel pain, fear, and deserve fair and humane treatment. I enjoyed this book thoroughly, and while reading it, thought of the last book I read, "Out of the Darkness: The Story of Mary Ellen Wilson", by Eric A. Shelman & Stephen Lazoritz, M.D. While it is the story of the first child ever rescued from an abusive home (in 1874 New York), it is amazing to realize she was rescued by none other than the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals! A full third of the 344 page book chronicles the startup of the ASPCA and Henry Bergh's trials, humiliations, and tribulations in bringing the protection of animals into the mindset of people living in a time when it was commonly believed that animals did not feel pain at all. I have to make this recommendation along with "Rattling The Cage", so I hope if you buy them, you enjoy both books.
Rating:
Summary: Read This Book!
Review: This book will forever change the way you view non-human animals and the ways in which they are treated by humans.It is a must-read for anyone who claims to be a humanitarian, or who supports civil-rights and an end to prejudice in the world. The movement towards rights for non-human animals is deeply rooted in past and present movements for human freedoms. My sincere hope is that people who read this book will try to find ways to help Steven Wise in his struggle to advocate for non-human animals.
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