Animal Biographies: Toward a History of Individuals

What would we learn if animals could tell their own stories? Éric Baratay, a pioneering researcher in animal histories in France, applies his knowledge of historical methodologies to give voice to some of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ most interesting animals. He offers brief yet innovative accounts of these animals’ lives in a way that challenges the reader’s thinking about animals.

Baratay illustrates the need to develop a nonanthropocentric means of viewing the lives of animals...