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John Major had none of Thatcher’s reservations about German reunification and wanted to put Britain at the heart of Europe. But he faced growing Euroscepticism inside the Conservative Party. At Maastricht, Major secured for the UK the right to opt out or, later to opt in, to the proposed European single currency. The significance of this opt out for the longer term British sense of detachment from the rest of the EU was not then obvious. The ratification of the Maastricht Treaty in the UK, and the Major government, both nearly foundered, when the UK was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1991. Europe became a toxic issue in the Conservative Party. Mad Cow Disease triggered a policy of non-cooperation by the UK with the rest of the EU. Major championed the enlargement of the EU to include the newly freed countries of eastern and central Europe.

Chapter 1 (Their Secret Elect) is an investigation of the moments when animals appear as a group or in more singular instances in the work of Jacques Derrida. Fontenay carefully suggests that in some of these instances, Derrida may over-generalize and thus elide certain anthropological specificities but praises his continued engagement with the animal question.

Chapter 2 (The Improper) is a wide-ranging critique of the ways the human exception has prevented the question of the philosophical status of animals from being addressed but ultimately argues for the necessity of maintaining its exceptionality.

Chapter 3 (Between Possessions and Persons) is a forceful critique of one of the main proponents of animal rights, the Australian philosopher Peter Singer along with his acolyte Paola Cavalieri. Fontenay argues that taking animals into philosophical account should not lead to neglect for what she calls the “human exception” but rather to a revalorization of its vital fragility.

Chapter 4 (Rhetorics of Dehumanization) places the writing of Alphonse Toussenel, a 19^th century Fourrierist whose most notable contributions were an anti-Semitic treatise on the “history of financial feudalism” and a book on “the spirit of the beasts,” in the context of the pseudo-science of physiognomy.

Chapter 5 (They Are Sleeping and We Are Watching Over Them) investigates how the “animal question” was treated in the works of Adorno and Horkheimer, Aristotle, Leibniz and Husserl, finding in each of these philosopher’s works a “tempered” version of the human exception.

Chapter 6 (The Pathetic Pranks of Bio-Art) is, as its title suggests, a scathing critique of Bio-Art. In Fontenay’s reading, Bio-Art abusively appropriates the legitimate concern for animal rights and carelessly avoids the true ethical and political questions posed by genetic engineering.

Chapter 7 (The Ordinariness of Barbarity) portrays the vast extent of cruelty towards animals, from the slaughter of cows under the threat of mad cow disease to industrial methods of animal breeding and slaughter. It provides a coda to the book by reframing the need for rights to be attributed to animals.