Winner 2021 Association for the Rhetoric of Science Technology and Medicine Book Award Honorable Mention 2021 Rhetoric Society of America Book Awardampampnbsp Honorable Mention 2021 Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award for Outstanding Published Scholarship in Public Address The way we talk about living beings can raise or lower their perceived value. Consider the prolife strategy of calling a fetus aampampnbspchild thereby effectively promoting the value of fetal life. In the opposite direction calling a Pakistani child killed by a US drone strikeampampnbspcollateral damageampampnbspcan implicitly demote the value of that childs life. Allison L. RowlandsampampnbspZoetropes and the Politics of Humanhoodampampnbsplooks at such discursive practicesproviding the first systematic account of how transvaluations like these operate in public discourse and lurk at the edges of all language. ampampnbsp Building on the necropolitical concept that we are constantly parsing populations into worthy lives subhuman lives and lives sentenced to death Rowlands study focuses specifically atampampnbspzoetropesthe rhetorical devices and figures that result in such transvaluations. Through a series of case studies including microbial life at the American Gut Project fetal life at the National Memorial for the Unborn and vital human life at two of the nations premier fitness centersand in conversation with cuttingedge theories of race gender sexuality and disabilitythis book brings to light the discursive practices that set the terms for inclusion into humanhood and make us who we are. ampampnbsp