Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights
From All Creatures Book and Video Review Guide

Author: Tom Regan

Reviewed by Frank L. and Mary T. Hoffman

r-empty

Published by:

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of
The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200
Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowmanlittlefield.com  
PO Box 317;
Oxford; OX2 9RU, UK
Distributed by National Book Network
1-800-462-6420
Copyright © 2004 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
ISBN 0-7425-3352-2 (alk. Paper)
Printed in the United States of America
Hardback, 229 pages, $21.95 U.S.

Review:

The very first sentence of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s Foreword to Empty Cages by Tom Regan states, “The book you are holding in your hands is, in my estimation, the single best introduction to the topic of animal rights ever written.”

We whole-heartedly agree. But we discovered that Empty Cages contained far more than what one would expect from an “introduction to animal rights.” Even our many years of involvement in animal advocacy did not prepare us for the facts, the superb reasoning, the TRUTH hidden beneath the flood of out-and-out lies that the public is subjected to by those whose bottom line depends upon keeping us as ignorant as possible.

Referring to animal rights, have you ever had someone ask you, “What about plants?” Under the section titled Objections to Animal Rights Tom Regan once and for all gives logical answers to this and ten more such objections (ending with that well-worn favorite, “Let’s Solve the Human Problems First!”) that are familiar to anyone working for animal rights.

We’re all familiar with a reviewer’s description of a book as a “must read.” But, yes, this really, truly is a “must read”! Not only is it a “must read,” it is a “must refer to,” “must give copies of.”

About the Author (from book):

Tom Regan (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, North Carolina State University) is universally recognized as the intellectual leader of the animal rights movement. During his more than thirty years on the faculty, he received numerous awards for excellence in undergraduate and graduate teaching; was named University Alumni Distinguished Professor; published hundreds of professional papers and more than twenty books; won major international awards for film writing and direction; and presented hundreds of lectures throughout the United States and abroad. Upon his retirement in 2001, he received the William Quarles Holliday Medal, the highest honor North Carolina State University can bestow on one of its faculty.

In that same year, using his donated papers and extensive personal library, the North Carolina State University Library established the Tom Regan Animal Rights Archive, the world's leading archival resource for animal rights scholarship. Information about Tom Regan's career and the archive named in his honor is available at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/arights/  

With his wife, Nancy, he co-founded The Culture & Animals Foundation.

 

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