This is a study of how elephants, lions, tigers and other big cats were trained to perform in the circus. Their acts are described as ‘wild and dangerous’, although Tait also reveals how they evoke a broad spectrum of emotions – terror and fear, admiration and awe, intimacy and eroticism, friendship and respect. The study ranges in scope from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twenty-first, with a focus on companies touring England, Western Europe, north America and Australia.

Tait recounts how two businesses led by the German Carl Hagenbeck and the English Frank Bostock sourced wild animals from Africa and Asia, initially for exhibition in travelling menageries and later for training as circus performers. They pioneered techniques in training wild animals and gave demonstrations of colonial domination. Their quasi-military styling – jackboots, peaked caps, leather whips – inspired the caricature of the lion tamer as cruel. An ideology for the humane treatment of animals emerged in response. Yet Tait attends closely to accounts of training technique. Trainers demonstrated courage in working with such large, sometimes dangerous, animals. They also demonstrated patience and perseverance in accumulating animal sense. Alfred Court, Mabel Stark and Patricia Bourne are particularly admired for working so intimately with lions, tigers and leopards.

Tait traces the relation of circus training to scientific studies of animals – from Darwin's foundational book on emotions, through behavioural studies of instinct and aggression, to fieldwork on animals in their natural environments. Circus emerges as an emotional playground in the science of human–animal relations. Extremes of anthropomorphism play out as dramatic experiments in cross-species identification. Elephants’ capacity for aggression is displaced when they appear in the ring as comic, cute and lovable. Circus-trained wild animals also performed in the movies. Tait draws on these films to augment the analysis of emotions in training. Photographs also enliven the reading experience.

Tracking the exotic geographies traversed by the careers of wild animal performers is the book's more elusive aim. The research is made manageable by relying on biographies of trainers’ careers. Following the animals as they shipped across continents and transferred between owners may have strengthened the intercultural perspective. In the charity sector, variations in the treatment of animal performers continue to mark so-called civilized cultures from the barbaric. The book speculates, in conclusion, on spectator affect in animal performance, engaging a universal discourse on emotional generosity and species survival.