ALL HEAVEN IN A RAGE

Read before retiring, this book literally will produce nightmares. Its subject is cruelty to animals through the ages, particularly in Britain. It is written with enormous sympathy but relentless horror, and its message is that man is a bloody beast in relation to all other creatures. In a highly non-sensational manner, which still does not contradict its theme, this sweeps from the Colosseum to the Chicago stockyards. Geese are given a diet to swell their livers a hundredfold. Animals are castrated, caponized, gelded, forcefed, kept in unnatural habitats such as stocks, sweat-boxes, artificial twilight, and inhumanly slaughtered. The high-velocity expanding bullet, which tears a hole as big as a hat, removes any risk from so-called sportsmanship. And so on. The author also surveys big game hunting and the lady's coat that cost a hundred mink an agonized death in traps. Altogether unsettling, which is the intention, and Turner is a literate social commentator.