The animals in this landmark book (elephants, hippos, okapi, lions, jackals, cows, sheep, horses, white ants, quagga, Nazi cattle, police dogs and baboons) are chosen strategically to highlight different facets of our shared past. With this animal-centric lens, decades of research are brought together in an astonishing book, one that takes animals seriously. The possibility of our shared future pivots on a reckoning with our shared pasts. This pioneering work shows what human-animal history can do, not only to help us better understand our place in the world, but to make our world, however slightly, a better place.