To modern sensibilities, early zoos seem to have been unnatural
places where animals led miserable lives in cramped, wrought-iron
cages. Today zoo animals typically wander in open spaces that
resemble natural habitats and are enclosed, not by bars, but by
moats, cliffs, and other landscape features. Savages and Beasts
traces the origins of the modern zoo in the efforts of
nineteenth-century German animal entrepreneur Carl Hagenbeck. How
did seemingly enlightened ideas about the role of zoos and the
nature of animal captivity develop out of the simple business of
placing exotic creatures on public display?
"This is much more than a history of Hagenbeck's many successes.
It is an historical explanation for why the environments of zoos
today are meant to mask the human character of the places in which
animals are forced to live their unnatural lives." -- American
Historical Review
"A fine read, in which good use of picture archives has
complemented the writer's extensive documentary research." -- New
Scientist
"Rothfels is attuned to the ironies pervading zoos' mediation of
people and animals and understands that zoos operate according to
entrepreneurial rather than environmental principles." -- Chronicle
of Higher Education
"Convincingly argues that the image of Hagenbeck as a modern-day
Noah, a great animal lover trying to educate the public about the
wonders of nature, belies the basic nature of Hagenbeck's
enterprise... Rothfels raises questions about past practices of
exhibiting animals (and people) and about what zoos of the present
are all about." -- Journal of the History of Biology
"A fascinating if disturbing tale of animal and human display."
-- German StudiesReview
Nigel Rothfels received his Ph.D. in history from Harvard
University and is the director of the Office of Undergraduate
Research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has been the
recipient of fellowships from the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for
Historical Studies at Princeton University, the Humanities Research
Centre at the Australian National University, and the National
Endowment for the Humanities. He is the editor of the
interdisciplinary collection Representing Animals.
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