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(More customer reviews)One need only read the title to know that this handsome book is not a celebration of zoos. It is, rather, a full frontal attack on them. Jensen provides a poetic text written from the heart, and while his bibliography excludes some important writings on zoos, his criticisms are piercing. "Zoos are about power," he says, meaning our power over animals and our control over nature (or at least the illusion of it). He describes the clicking of a grizzly bear's claws on the concrete floor of her cage as she paces back and forth rhythmically, neurotically. This stereotyped pacing will be familiar to practically anyone who's spent time at a zoo, and it's symptomatic of what's wrong with these institutions. "Zoos are a manifestation of this civilizing process: the foreclosure of options, the enclosure of freedoms... A bear is simplified to meat in a sack of brown fur, and not the relationships, desires, and behaviors that make a bear. She becomes a BEARTM." Zoos are first and foremost commercial enterprises, and the animals' interests invariably play second (or third, or forth) fiddle to the quest for profit. Large, charismatic species are reduced to mere shells by the interminable boredom and lack of stimulation. Average life expectancy is actually short; those statistics of animals living longer in captivity are based on the rare elders who beat the odds, not on average life span. Jensen also rightly rebukes humanity's hypocrisy in romanticizing wildness while simultaneously extirpating any wild creature that gets in the way of our commercial developments. And zoos have precious little to show for their self-aggrandizing claims of benefiting species survival.Tweedy-Holmes's black and white photos show the dignity and grace of animals despite their artificial surroundings. The images are poignant without any hint of being manipulative. Fittingly, the zoos where the photos were taken are not recorded; instead the species name is accompanied by a list of countries (sometimes only one) where they still cling to a wild existence. I noticed a couple of errors here: the American "Black bear" on page 117 is actually an Asiatic black bear, and I suspect the "Rhesus monkey" on page 76 is a White uakari. This book will change your next visit to a zoo, if you decide to go at all.
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