I would recommend this book to any of my conservative-leaning friends who think animal issues are none of their concern. For too long, liberals have dominated and isolated animal rights as a "leftist" cause. But there are plenty of reasons why Christians and conservatives should care about and protect animals, and Matthew Scully does a brilliant job presenting his case.
This book is sad, beautiful, thought-provoking, scary, and uplifting. Most of all it's life-changing.
I wish this were required reading for GOP politicians!

This is one of the best books I've ever read, not just one of top books on the topic of animal ethics... Recommended to me by a liberal atheist, it was written by a conservative Christian, so the seeming polarity of world views convinced me it must expertly written. I was not disappointed.

Scully shows a high level of consistent rational argument from both the secular scientific and religious perspectives, all while displaying a wry sense of humor and respectful tone.

The author goes "under cover" at both a blood sport convention and one of the biggest factory farm corporations in the US to support his ideas and academic references with concrete fact.

A must-read for anyone with conscience.

Matthew Scully’s book “Dominion” is subtitled “the power of man, the suffering of animals, and the call to mercy.” Scully is a surprising voice to advocate for a re-evaluation of our ethics regarding animals. A Republican who wrote for “National Review” and even did some speech writing for Sarah Palin, Scully speaks to a group that might not be predisposed by political alignment to his admonition.
This paradox is what drew me to Scully’s book, but unfortunately one of the two ways I felt most let down by “Dominion” (I’ll share the second disappointment shortly). I expected Scully to treat his interlocutors with a measure of respect and understanding, but instead found Scully to be bombastic and even demeaning to his ideological opponents. In other words, Scully the political speechwriter leaks out far more than Scully the man paving an ideological path between conservative and liberal. The fleeting moments the latter voice emerged were my favorite in the book.
Scully’s book is ambitious in its scope. Scully builds a theological foundation for his call to the ethical treatment of animals. He then moves on to call out the hunting industry, show the problems with whaling, hunting big game (especially elephants), and finally factory farming. Despite Scully beginning with a theological foundation, “Dominion” isn’t primarily a theological book, it is primarily a political book. That was my second biggest disappointment, in fact. I realize that Scully isn’t theologically trained, but his theological argument was the weakest aspect of the book. I agree with his primary argument, that our call to reflect God in our dominion of the world is a call to reflect the character of God in stewarding the environment he has placed us in and care for the animals in a manner that reflects his nature. Scully deftly moves the argument from being about animal’s rights to about humanity’s call to act ethically to the “least of these.”
So far, so good. But when Scully tries to extend his argument to other animal imagery in the Bible (Jesus metaphorically calling his followers sheep, for instance), he loses ground. The fact that Jesus and the authors of scripture (living in agrarian cultures) utilize animals frequently doesn’t hold the weight that Scully wants it to. He argues that such utilization points to an undergirding ethic of a high care for animals.
Scully moves from this to taking on the hunting industry. It’s another strange move for Scully. He is at his most combative and caricaturing in this section. He scoffs at the idea that hunters care about the environment and rejects the notion that the money that is exchanged does anything to protect the environment. You can hear his hyperbolic style here, "Killing 'for sport' is the perfect type of that pure evil for which metaphysicians have sometimes sought. Most wicked deeds are done because the doer proposes some good to himself...[but] the killer for sport has no such comprehensible motive. He prefers death to life, darkness to light. He gets nothing except the satisfaction of saying, 'Something that wanted to live is dead. There is that much less vitality, consciousness, and perhaps, joy in the universe. I am the Spirit that Denies.”
While Scully lands a number of punches, his overall approach made it hard for me to trust his through and through. While far from an expert on the subject, there were a number of times it seemed as though Scully straw-manned his opponents or flat-out ignored potential objections. I’m not convinced, for example, that shutting down the hunting of predator and prey will create the balance in nature Scully believes it will.
Scully’s sections on the whaling industry and the killing of elephants were much more airtight to my eyes. Scully’s section on factory farming was the strongest of the book and would have been what I would have led with, if I were him. I found it hard to argue with Scully that factory farming is a very hard practice to defend in squaring with God’s purposes for us to have dominion over creation in a manner that reflects his dominion. Scully says, "Factory farming isn't just killing: It is negation, a complete denial of the animal as a living being with his or her own needs and nature. It is not the worst evil we can do, but it is the worst evil we can do to them.”
I agree with Scully that, as a whole, our dominion is caricaturized by selfishness, greed, and callousness. Scully says, "Let's just call things what they are. When a man's love of finery clouds his moral judgment, that is vanity. When he lets a demanding palate make his moral choices, that is gluttony. When he ascribes the divine will to his own whims, that is pride. And when he gets angry at being reminded of animal suffering that his own daily choices might help avoid, that is moral cowardice." When we do not reflect God’s mercy to animals, our image bearing capacity is disfigured. It's true, although like a hell-and-brimstone preacher, while he may be true in what he says, he flattens the truth… and how long term is the change that comes from inducing guilt and beating brows?
Scully ends with an incremental political approach built not on the rights of animals, but rather the call for human beings to exercise dominion as God intends. I found some of his suggestions compelling, although I wish that an approach that was more aware of where his case was thoroughly convincing (factory farming) and less so (hunting) would lead to narrower and more practical political recommendations.
In short, Scully is best when he appeals to God’s high purposes for us in reflecting him. While there is a lot of sound and fury in “Dominion,” I think many of us can agree with statements like this: "Missing above all is love, which the theorists mistake for utility. Love for animals, like our own love for one another, comes in seeing the worth and beauty of other apart from us, in understanding that the creatures need not be our equals to be our humble brothers in suffering and sadness and the story of life.”

For more reviews see thebeehive.live.

Well. This was a shrewdly written book. Instead of arguing for animal rights he argues that humans have neglected to exercise care for animals in their use of them. In other words modern humans have forsaken a biblical and moral vision of dominion for a quite selfish and callous use of animals for profit. In this use we ourselves are disfigured and reduced.
Most of the first half of the book is an overview of the most egregious misuse of animals in our world, focusing on the trophy hunting of animals, especially elephants, the hunting of the great whales, and the industrial production of pork. What he finds in these three areas is tantamount to torture, a rejection of care/dominion for a vicious, economic approach to the higher mammals. The rest of the book is a more philosophical discussion of natural law as a basis of morality and a very discussion of whether or not animals have emotions and if they feel and experience pain in a way similar to the way we do.
Throughout the book the author deals extensively with the arguments of the other side, most of whom are fellow conservatives (he is a former speech writer foe Bush II). He seeks to ground his arguments for mercy for animals in universal human moral values. He is very convincing that higher mammals experience the world in much the same way that we do and is very convincing in his arguments for the need to abandon trophy hunting, whaling, and industrial food production. I don't think that he ever actually called for everyone to stop eating meat, he does call us to be mindful of what we are doing when we eat and when we interact with animals.
This book pushes us toward vegetarianism in a logical caring way. I would have liked to see some interaction with animal farming that is compassionate and humane. He was long on theory (and I am in no way denigrating this) and short on solutions except to ban trophy hunting and whaling (which I would support). His more journalistic sections, when he is describing the activities that he abhors are much more readable and passionate then his more theory driven chapters and this makes the book uneven. All in all this is an important book I think, because he makes the important distinction between what we can do and what we should do. We don't owe animals mercy because they have rights, we owe them mercy because we have dominion.

This book is really incredible. Nearly every page contains a memorable quote or idea; its almost poetic because his writing flows so smoothly. It's a true work of art and the way he delves into the world of science, animal rights, leisure and necessity is seamless. His words are extremely compelling and they have encouraged me to become a stronger vegan and really pour my efforts into the fight for animal rights.

This, like so many books about the systematic abuse and widespread slaughter of animals, was a hard book to read. The raw truth can be devastatingly painful. Matthew Scully has done an excellent job writing a convincingly powerful, and absolutely moving argument for the rights of non-human animals. I was initially shocked to learn that Scully is a vegetarian, the former speech writer for G.W. Bush, and a Conservative Republican-not things I would normally associate with a merciful position toward animals. After having read his book, I can see where the original meaning of what it meant to be a conservative is exemplified in Scully's take on the human-animal relationship. Someone recently asked me, "Why is it that people who call themselves 'Conservatives' never conserve anything?" In this regard, Scully calls both his conservative comrades, and everyone else, to accountability for their inhumane, cruel and evil treatment of animals the world over. As a respected journalist and former editor of the National review, any conservative would be hard pressed to brush Scully's deeply compassionate reflections off as the rantings of some "animal rights nut". He presents the truth of the suffering of animals at our hands in all of its glaring horror. At the same time, his arguments are clear, well thought out, rational, and impossible for a person with even the faintest glimmer of a sense of morality to contradict. This THE book to give to all of your friends with leanings towards the right side of the fence, since it's aimed not at those who have already taken up the cause, but at those who tend to be the most resistant to the idea of animal rights. For this reason alone, it's one of the most important books ever written on the subject. Still, it's also a book for everyone. If you care about the suffering we cause our animal brethren, it's a must-read.

An absolute abomination of a book, blending quasi-scientific half-facts with religious nonsense.

This book is a life-changer - beautifully written, compelling arguments, and altogether inspiring.

Read it even if you're sure you'll never give up your bacon. There's something in here for everyone to think about and act on.

Deeply disturbing. This book kept me up many nights thinking of the utter horrors that humans impart on the innocent creatures that call this world home. Thinking of the men with their guns on their hunting expeditions to Africa to take home what is to them just a trophy, like real "big game" -- elephants. Elephants have babies, they have sisters, they have families, they have memories. The chimpanzees locked up in research facilities their whole lives. The factory farm pigs who never saw the light of day until the truck ride to the slaughter house. The animals who are now the fur coats walking down Chicago streets in winter.

The utter devastation of humans on the lives of animals. Matthew Scully is a beautiful writer. This book still haunts me years later.

This book was long and rambling and dense; and extremely poetic and powerful and important. I have never read a book with so many passages I wanted to copy to reread later.

This book encapsulates what has always been a meaningful question to me - What does our treatment of animals say about us as humans?

Here are some of my favorite quotes/passages from the book.
———————————————————————-

“It is true, as we are often reminded, that kindness to animals is among the humbler duties of human charity - though for just that reason among the more easily neglected. And it is true that there will always be enough injustice and human suffering in the world to make the wrongs done to animals seem small and secondary. The answer is not that justice is a finite commodity, nor are kindness and love. Where we find wrongs done to animals, it is no excuse to say that more important wrongs are done to human beings, and let us concentrate on those. A wrong is a wrong, and often the little ones, when they are shrugged off as nothing, spread and do the gravest harm to ourselves and others.” - pg xii

“In fact, let us just call things what they are. When a man’s love of finery clouds his moral judgement, that is vanity. When he lets a demanding palate make his moral choices, that is gluttony. When he ascribes the divine will to his own whims, that is pride. And when he gets angry at being reminded of animal suffering that his own daily choices might help avoid, that is moral cowardice.” - pg 121

“Pigs and lambs and cows and chickens are not pieces of machinery, no matter how cost-efficient it might be to treat them as such. Machinery doesn’t cry or feel frightened or lonely. And when a man treats them this way, he might as well be a machine himself. Something dies in him, too. Something is lost in a society that rewards and enriches him, driving him on at this pace and in this spirit.” - pg 288

“Kindness to animals is not our most important duty as human beings, nor is it our least important. How we treat our fellow creatures is only one more way in which each one of us, every day, writes our own epitaph — bearing into the world a message of light and life or just more darkness and death, adding to the world’s joy or to its despair.
‘In a drop of rain can be seen the colors of the sun,’ observed the historian Lewis Namier. So in every act of kindness we hold in our own hands the mercy of our Maker, whose purposes are in life and not death, whose love does not stop at us but surrounds us, bestowing dignity and beauty and hope on every creature that lives and suffers and perishes. Perhaps that is part of the animals’ role among us, to awaken humility, to turn our minds back to the mystery of things, and open our hearts to that most impractical of hopes in which all creation speaks as one. For them as for us, if there is any hope at all then it is the same hope, and the same love, and the same God who ‘shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.’ “
- pg 398

I read this hoping to learn more concerning the treatment of animals in factory farms. What I got was a seemingly endless, repetitive diatribe against the mistreatment of animals in any conceivable way. The book was at least 250 pages too long full of emotional appeals. I did find several sections well written, well thought-out, and helpful. But I also flipped page after page to get past so much of the redundancy of his arguments and his endless argumentation.

I appreciate his concern regarding the treatment of animals in various circumstances--most of all factory farms, which he exposes as awful. But my goodness was it long and repetitive. Avoid it!

It's funny. Until I read Upton Sinclairs' "Jungle" I honestly felt it was one of the best of investigative reporting of the meatpacking industry..It was a precursor of things to come. But this book by Scully is the eminent grise of investigative reporting. It packs such a wollop of insight that it results in moments of sleep deprivation. Yes not sleep inducing. He warns you right at the beginning as you read the chapters that he preparing you for the back of the book regarding pig farming. Yes he writes of whales, sharks, dolphins , chickens,and turkeys. In between these creatures of God he writes of gorrilas , chimps....mice.....Yes I have been inside of a slaughterhouse as kid...and everything he writes is true .....I have also worked in a research lab where the rabbits / rhesus monkeys and mice used for expiremental methods in developing medicines for diseases that plague the world. This is a good book. Read it...I dare you to not look at your next meal...meat or vegetarian and wonder how did it arrive on your plate. Remember humans whether Greeks/Puritans/Aristocrats.....didnt want to sully their hands either because they didn't know how to do simple agriculture or slaying beasts of burden to eat needed meals. They wanted others of alleged lower class to do the dirty time consuming nauseating job of eating to survive. Yes all creature have a feeding clock timed by the needs of hunger in their stomachs and minds.We eat to survive or is it because we want to dominate or we don't know.