The first thing that strikes me upon inspecting Margaret Derry's Masterminding Nature is that the cover features a portrait of a purebred beef shorthorn painted by Derry herself. The aforementioned shorthorn was also ‘bred and raised’ (cover) on Derry's own farm. Add to this her four previous books on the history of animal breeding and it feels safe to assume that this is a historian with a deep and personal fascination for the world of animal breeding. In Masterminding Nature, Derry turns this interest into an exhaustive exploration of the evolution of modern animal breeding in both theory and practice. However, though the author proudly states her connection with cattle breeding, this historical account is disappointingly thin on the lived experience of the people involved in the practice. Masterminding Nature gives a detailed account of the development of ideas about breeding through published books, trials and products, but I came away from the book missing a sense of the personal perspective of people involved in the practice.

Whereas Derry's previous books have focused on one species per book (chickens, cattle, horses etc.), Masterminding Nature is far more ambitious in its scope, covering more species, a wider time frame and multiple countries. The book is organized into six chapters – each exploring a key development in the history of animal breeding. Derry's discussion is centred around three converging themes: the structure of agriculture, developments in genetics, and the invention of new technology. The main argument across the book is that theory and practice were mutually influential in animal and plant breeding.

The book begins with a chapter on artificial selection between 1700 and 1900. Derry claims that artificial selection – controlling which animals breed – is a practice that dates back ‘to the time of domestication’ (p. 14) around fourteen thousand years ago. However, Derry places the formalization of breeding knowledge as beginning in the latter part of the eighteenth century with the work of Robert Bakewell, a tenant farmer. Bakewell recommended careful selection of both male and female animals, the use of inbreeding and progeny testing of bulls. This chapter goes on to discuss the influence that Darwinian theory had on animal breeding – that it gave a framework in which to place artificial selection.

The importance and influence of Darwin's theories is taken further in the next chapter, which discusses early developments in genetics such as the Mendelian and biometric divide in research, as well as debate concerning discontinuous and continuous inheritance. Derry uses an example from the breeding of chickens to explore the conflict and confusion that arose from this divide. By the late 1920s this conflict had morphed into a fusion of Darwinism and Mendelism through the work of J.B.S. Haldane, R.A. Fisher and Sewall Wright, leading to the birth of population genetics.

Whereas the first part of the book focuses on the theory behind artificial selection in animal breeding, the second half delves into the reproductive technology developed in the twentieth century and the increasing complexity of genetics and the rise of cloning. I found Derry's analysis on the role of freezing technology in artificial insemination in Chapter 4 one of the most interesting parts of the book. Derry makes a convincing argument that this innovation enabled patterns of breeding that had not been possible before the new technology. Previously, cattle breeders were limited by their inability to transport semen over long distances, but freezing allowed them to expand the area over which an individual bull could artificially engender offspring. This is an example of compelling historical analysis in this book, because it traces a technical innovation (cold chain) through to its eventual unintended consequences (reduced genetic diversity).

There is much information in this book. It can be used as a reference for the key movements, ideas and people in the history of animal breeding. But the book reads less well as a narrative. I found myself often getting confused by jumps between time periods and countries. Each chapter is divided into subheadings, but I found these disorientating and they broke up the chapters in such a way that I found it difficult to determine the overall argument of each one. After reading the book I understand some of the important historical influences on animal breeding but am left with questions over details. My final impression is that Masterminding Nature could have benefited from a narrower focus.