MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewUsing source material that includes advertisements, diaries, interviews, letters and editorials, Kean argues the massacre was not the result of a uniform domestic panic. She does point to the 'black boredom' of the days after war was declared, and how mass euthanization was something citizens could do to prepare. But over all, Kean claims, perhaps too vaguely, that there was nothing 'mass' about the thinking that led to this slew of pet deaths. Every decision to euthanize emerged from the context of a 'particular prior existing relationship within a household' ... Kean makes these claims academically, arguing in the careful — even downright glacial — positing of a responsible historian. Still, her snapshots of life during wartime are engaging.
