In an excellent essay in Zooicide: Seeing Cruelty, Demanding Abolition (AK Press; 2018), Stephen Eisenman describes zooicide as a history of cruelty to animals in zoos. “Animals were thus robbed of their souls and their social being;” he writes, “they symbolized nothing but their biological selves-their genus and species-and were exhibited as entertainments or trophies in zoos all over the world.” This book is an essential read on the grounds of Eisenman’s important essay alone; however, this is principally a volume of Sue Coe’s art illustrating her understanding of zooicide and her interpretation of the lives of animals behind bars. Her insight, vision, and compassion visible in her art are what makes this book outstanding. On her visits to zoos she recalls, “Standing drawing the prisoners in a sea of cell phones and baby carriages. The living props for human entertainment rarely making eye contact.” She recalls observing Cleo in Syracuse zoo, New York, an octopus in her “tank prison”, and apologizes to her while dedicating the book to her. Coe’s “Reflection” shows Cleo in the foreground with the artist sketching in her notebook reflected in the glass beyond her. Other works illustrate animals working in circuses in the past–“Circus Train Wreck” depicts the 1893 train crash in Pennsylvania killing 50 horses and harming tigers, lions, zebras, elephants, and a gorilla–and in the present–animals trapped in cages in such war-ravaged cities as Belgrade zoo in 1999 when a rhino is “driven mad by night bombing [and] smashes her head against a wall until she dies.” Eisenman is correct to say that Coe’s work comprises of “Sunshine and shadow, deep gloom and sudden illumination, and half-light–that in-between that can trigger feelings of anxiety or even terror”. This work requires resolve on behalf of the observer but seeing truth often does.
Zooicide: Seeing Cruelty, Demanding Abolition by Sue Coe and Stephen Eisenman
Zooicide: Seeing Cruelty, Demanding Abolition by Sue Coe and Stephen Eisenman (AK Press; 2018)

In this section:
- A Journey in Ladakh by Andrew Harvey
- A Life for Animals by Christine Townend
- About A Son by David Whitehouse
- Age of Anger by Pankaj Mishra
- All About Love by bell hooks
- Animal Ethics: the basics by Tony Milligan
- Azadi by Arundhati Roy
- Beastly by Keggie Carew
- Beef by Andrew Rimas and Evan D.G. Fraser
- Bleating Hearts by Mark Hawthorne
- Blueprint for Revolution by Srdja Popovic
- Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild
- Call of the Cats by Andrew Bloomfield
- Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
- Empathy by Roman Krznaric
- Even Vegans Die by Carol J Adams, Patti Breitman and Virginia Messina
- Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill
- Keep Talking: A Broadcasting Life by David Dimbleby
- King Leopold’s Ghost
- Love Notes by Philip McKibbin
- Love Soup by Anna Thomas
- Makers and Manners by Andrew Holden
- Model Animal Welfare Act by Janice Cox and Sabine Lennkh
- Mortality by Christopher Hitchens
- Moti: An Indian Elephant
- Nim Chimpsky by Elizabeth Hess
- No Time to Lose by Pema Chodron
- On Editing by Helen Corner-Bryant and Kathryn Price
- On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
- Orlando by Virginia Woolf
- Pets in America by Katherine C. Grier
- Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq
- Please Take Me Home by Clare Campbell
- Ruth Plant by Jenny Remfrey
- Second Nature by Jonathan Balcombe
- Story Craft by Jack Hart
- Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
- The Animal Ethics Reader and Social Creatures
- The Animals’ Vegan Manifesto by Sue Coe
- The Chernobyl Privileges by Alex Lockwood
- The Elephant Conspiracy by Peter Hain
- The End of Eddy by Edouard Louis
- The Face on Your Plate by Jeffrey Masson
- The Four Loves by C S Lewis
- The Great Cat & Dog Massacre by Hilda Kean
- The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh
- The Honor Code by Kwame Anthony Appiah
- The Inner Life of Cats by Thomas McNamee
- The Lion in the Living Room by Abigail Tucker
- The New Wild by Fred Pearce
- The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane
- The Pig in Thin Air by Alex Lockwood
- The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
- The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Scarlett & Sophie Rickard
- The Whale Warriors by Peter Heller
- The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy
- The Wildings by Nilanjana Roy
- To the River by Olivia Laing
- Topsy by Michael Daly
- Walking With Ghosts by Gabriel Byrne
- Zooicide: Seeing Cruelty, Demanding Abolition by Sue Coe and Stephen Eisenman