Peta Tait is a professor of theatre and drama at La Trobe University.

‘The author provides a wealth of well researched information and argument that equips readers to reflect for themselves on the devastating effect of humans on animals both wild and domesticated that have been slaughtered, captured, confined, trained, and maddened on an almost inconceivable scale for entertainment, commerce, and politics. ... This impressive and fully sourced work illuminates little-studied aspects of human–nonhuman animal relations, those of particular abuses involving all social classes of westernized society in the industrial age.’

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction1. Ferocious lion acts2. War with animals3. Imperial hunting show legends4. Mobs and hooligans, crowds and fansPlates5. Head in the colonial lion’s mouth6. War arts about elephantine military empires7. Nature’s beauties and scientific specimen contestsConclusionWorks citedIndex

Peta Tait is a professor of theatre and drama at La Trobe University.

‘The author provides a wealth of well researched information and argument that equips readers to reflect for themselves on the devastating effect of humans on animals both wild and domesticated that have been slaughtered, captured, confined, trained, and maddened on an almost inconceivable scale for entertainment, commerce, and politics. ... This impressive and fully sourced work illuminates little-studied aspects of human–nonhuman animal relations, those of particular abuses involving all social classes of westernized society in the industrial age.’

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction1. Ferocious lion acts2. War with animals3. Imperial hunting show legends4. Mobs and hooligans, crowds and fansPlates5. Head in the colonial lion’s mouth6. War arts about elephantine military empires7. Nature’s beauties and scientific specimen contestsConclusionWorks citedIndex