A Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical, and Evolutionary Imperative to Treat All Beings with Compassion. By Matthieu Ricard. Shambala, 2016. Hardback, 341 pp. Ricard takes arguments from his best-selling books, Altruism and Happiness, and follows them to their logical conclusion: that compassion toward all beings, including our fellow animals, is a moral obligation and the direction toward which any enlightened society must aspire. What arises from his narrative is an unambiguous and powerful ethical imperative for treating all of the animals with whom we share this planet with respect and compassion.