Now that Animals in the Third Reich has been out for a few years, including translations of the book into Czech and Japanese, I reflect back on the nervousness with which I first approached the subject. Since both Nazism and animal protection are emotionally very charged topics, it was very difficult to find an appropriate tone. I did not wish to adopt a manner of clinical detachment, like many scholars, or of polemic, like many activists. I wished to study Nazism not simply as history but also as myth, but the awe that surrounds the Holocaust has created a methodological conservatism among scholars. I sometimes met with incomprehension, but was encouraged by Barbara Ehrenreich, who wrote to me that " all that 'weird stuff' is absolutely pertinent, even to a 'conventional' history. Show them Blood Rites.... In the section on Nazis, I certainly touch on some of this primordial stuff, though not anywhere near as thoroughly as you will." After about three years, I feel vindicated by several fine reviews, and I thank the many people who expressed their confidence in this, admittedly rather nervy, endeavor. Boria Sax, Author