What have we accomplished by slaughtering millions of wild animals in order to satisfy our lust for elegance and status? With a historian’s careful eye and a biologist’s deep understanding, Smith tracks fads for feather and fur hats. Lately, he tells us, conspicuous consumption has shifted to domesticated and farmed animals. Feather and fur headgear remain cultural icons, he argues, though more people eschew hats so that birds and mammals our great-grandparents slaughtered live on in companionable roles.

—Robin W. Doughty, Professor Emeritus, Department of Geography and the Environment, College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at Austin, and author of Feather Fashions and Bird Preservation

Revelatory and ambitious, Hats exposes the diabolically efficient network of plumage hunters and fur trappers that girdled the late nineteenth-century globe. No bird or beaver was safe—and all for the sake of a hat.

—Tessa Boase, author of Mrs Pankhurst’s Purple Feather: Fashion, Fury and Feminism—Women’s Fight for Change

This remarkable book documents the impact that our obsession with hats has had on the natural world. It outlines how the global trade in fur and feathers evolved and the damage it caused, and highlights how heroic campaigners brought about reform, which in many cases aided recovery of species whose existence was threatened. It is a timely reminder of the consequences of consumerism and why radical changes are needed so our own species learns to live in harmony with nature.

—Martin Harper, Global Conservation Director, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

Both sides of the fashion coin—sustainability and the need to adorn in feathers and fur—face up in this dynamic, erudite, fact-filled volume.

—Ellen Christine Colon-Lugo, founder, Ellen Christine Couture, and former President of the Milliners Guild

Feature on BBC History