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Hilda Kean and Philip Howell (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Animal Human History (London/New York: Routledge, 2018). 560 p. ISBN 9781138193260.
The Routledge Companion to Animal-Human History, edited by Hilda Kean and Philip Howell provides the reader with a solid overview of the field of animal-human history, showing the massive amount of work that has been done in the last few years in this relatively young subdiscipline. The volume aims to be a guide and an overview of literature for both current and prospective historians, which definitely holds true. It is a useful tool for historians interested in animal-human history and those already involved in this subdiscipline.
The volume is varied in its topics and methodologies and provides insight into the potential and innumerable opportunities animal-human history has to offer. Most of the chapters introduce some of the key elements of animal-human history, such as Philip Howell's chapter on agency, Helen Cowie's chapter on zoos and Neil Pemberton's, Julie-Marie Strange's and Michael Worboys' chapter on breeds and breeding. Another example is Boria Sax's chapter on anthropomorphism and zoomorphism, which has an explicit aim to show how tangible both concepts in fact are. Others embed their research into...