From: donb@igor.tamri.com (Don Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Book Review - "Free the Animals!" by Ingrid Newkirk
Organization: TOSHIBA America MRI, South San Francisco, CA
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 01:29:16 GMT

In article <1993Jan21.003554.4255@cs.mun.ca> ac@riemann.math.mun.ca
(Alka Chandna) writes:
>I'm not a writer, but I very much enjoyed this book by Newkirk & thought I'd
>take a shot at writing a review.  I'd appreciate any feedback!  The book, if
>you're interested, was published by Noble Press in Chicago, Ill.

Well OK, Alka, I'l see what I can do...

>****
>	Ingrid Newkirk's latest books has all the components of a high-paced 
>suspense: bone-chilling intrigue, convoluted conspiracy plots, scrapes with
>the law, high-priced lawyers, and just the right dose of hot'n'horny romance.
Here's the twist: the characters in Newkirk's book are real, the events that
>she chronicles actually happened, and the philosophy that underlies the plot
>will shake up the very way in which you think.  Who could resist?

Wow, the only things it sounds like it's missing are a plot and a Crisco
party!

>	"Free the Animals" is a book about what Newsweek magazine has called 
>the "fastest growing movement of the decade."  In fact, writer Ingrid Newkirk
>is the National Director of the 370,000-strong, U.S.-based, People for the
>Ethical Treatment of Animals.  In "Free the Animals", Newkirk takes on what is
>unarguably the most controversial aspect of the animal rights struggle: the
>workof the vigilante Animal Liberation Front (ALF).

Damn, I thought PETA stod for People for the Eating of Tasty Animals!  I
want my money back!

>	Stories of these masked women and men who break into laboratories and 
>free animals are fascinating enough.  What makes Newkirk's work especially
>compelling is the courage, conviction and compassion with which she writes.
>Where the author lacks in prose (Tolstoy, she ain't), she makes up for in 
>story-telling narrative.  Brilliantly, Newkirk has woven together three
>distinctlevels of narrative into one plot.

Masked men and women?  Vandalism?  Wow, kind of a GQ Anarchists Cookbook,
eh?

>	First, there is the basic storyline.  "Valerie", an officer with a
>Maryland police force, learns through her work, of a case of animal abuse at
>a Silver Springs lab.  Researcher Edward Taub, working at the Institute for
>Behavioural Research, had used monkeys in experiments of surgical crippling.
>From the notes of a lab assistant, "Twelve of (the monkeys) had surgically
>crippled limbs (which) had been done when they were juveniles.  Since then,
>they had torn or bitten off a total of thirty-nine fingers on these limbs.
>Their physical and mental torture had left many of them neurotic.  (In one)
>experiment, a monkey was strapped into a homemade immobilizing chair.  He
>would
>be held fast at his neck, wrists, waist, and ankles.  Acute noxious stimuli -
>pain - (was to be applied) to various parts of his body.  The pain was applied
>with a pair of surgical pliers clamped onto the monkey and locked to the 
>tightest notch.  The stimulus previously used was the open flame of a
>cigarette lighter."

Pictures!  We want to see pictures!!!

>Valerie goes to Britain, meets ALF founder Ronnie Lee, attends a boot camp for
>activists, and vrooms back to the States to get things started.  Tips from
>sympathizers inside the labs result in a domino effect.  Many sabotages,
>liberations & thefts later, we've met Vanguard, a dog saved from Navy-
>sponsored diving experiments, B-10, a baboon used in head-crash experiments,
>Britches, a baby monkey whose eyes had been sewn shut, and lots of cats,
>rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, pigs and cows too.

Not to mention Hank, the incredible exploding gerbil...

>	To keep readers from dismissing Valerie's efforts as being "irrelevant"

Not to mention criminal and insipid....

>,Newkirk has weaved a crash course in the philosophy of animal rights into the
>storyline.  In an incredibly believable manner, Newkirk slips in quotations 
>by everyone from Mahatma Gandhi ("The greatness of a nation and its moral 
>progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals") to Jeremy Bentham
>("The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they speak? But, can they
>suffer?") to Leonardo daVinci ("The day will come when we will look upon the
>murder of beasts as we now look upon the murder of men") to Martin Luther 
>King ("An unjust law is no law at all").  Peter Singer's utilitarian argument
>finds its way into the pages of the novel, as does Tom Regan's rights and
>responsibilities spiel.

Any quotes from Hitler?  I hear he loved his dogs...

    don