This book "brings some of the human/animal distinction's motivating concerns--morality, communicability, historical destiny, sovereignty--to case studies of human-animal relations in which animal species have become extinct or endangered. [It] focuses on mammoths, whales, and the North American bison beginning with the moments that these species' extinction or endangerment began to generate significant print archives. Throughout the cases in this book, various accounts of the distribution of agency and responsibility give rise to different accounts of the human role with respect to nonhumans"--