Bonds of War: How Civil War Financial Agents Sold the World on the Union by David K. Thomson (review)

Abstract

347 nal debates about funding the National Zoo, and Paula Tarankow, whose essay “Jim Key and Jim Crow: African American Animal Advocacy, Equine Performance, and Civil War Memory,” is an outstanding addition to the collection. There is little consistency among the authors in terms of providing historiographical context, and few of them bring their fellow contributors into conversation with their own work. Moreover, they rarely fully integrate the theoretical structures of animal studies into their analyses, thereby undermining Hess’s claims that this book will help bridge that gap. These essays, however, both collectively and individually, should serve to inspire others to take up the volume’s call to take Civil War animals seriously and to give them their proper historical due.