A View to a Death in the Morning: Hunting and Nature Through History Book

Cartmill's book is just as much a history of thought about nature as a history of hunting. Seamlessly weaving in philosophy and literature about the natural world and animals with more specific texts about hunting, Cartmill in these three chapters demonstrates how attitudes towards hunting changed from the scientific revolution to the period before WWI. In lucid prose, he details the shift from mechanistic philosophies of the pre-Enlightenment and Enlightenment periods to the nature-as-spirit beliefs of the Romanticists to the brutal hierarchical attitudes of Darwinism, always considering the way these transitions viewed, caused, and/or worked to relieve animal suffering. His conclusions are careful to account for the gray areas; he explains, for example, that in the Victorian period the Romantic and Darwinian views existed simultaneously and were in fact often in direct competition in public discourse, especially as people began to question the rightness of imperialism. If anything, the book's title makes it seem a narrower work than it actually is, thus downplaying its contribution to the history of man's relationship with nature. This is not to suggest that it is a poorly-balanced piece, but rather to applaud its ability to keep hunting always in a broad perspective. In doing so it is a solid basis for all future work under the umbrella of animal studies.