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Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals
Hal Herzog
"How rational are we in our relationship with animals? A puppy, after all, is "a family member in Kansas, a pariah in Kenya, and lunch in Korea". An animal behaviorist turned one of the world's foremost authorities on human-animal relations, Herzog shows us, in this readable study, how whimsical our attitudes can be. Why do we like some animals but not others? One answer seems to be that babylike features like big eyes bring out our parental and protective urges. (PETA has started a campaign against fishing called "Save the Sea Kittens)." Research has shown that the human brain is wired to think about animals and inanimate objects differently, and Herzog reveals how we can look at the exact same animal very differently given its context--most Americans regard cockfighting as cruel but think nothing of eating chicken, when in reality gamecocks are treated very well when they are not fighting, and most poultry headed for the table lead short, miserable lives and are killed quite painfully. An intelligent and amusing book that invites us to think deeply about how we define--and where we limit--our empathy for animals." Publishers Weekly
"One of a kind. I don't know when I've read anything more comprehensive about our highly involved, highly contradictory relationships with animals, relationships which we mindlessly, placidly continue no matter how irrational they may be….This page-turning book is quite something-you won't forget it any time soon." Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Deer: Lessons from the Natural World
"Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat is both educational and enjoyable, a page-turner that I dare say puts Herzog in the same class as Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis. Read this book. You'll learn some, you'll laugh some, you'll love some." BookPage
Bats Sing, Mice Giggle: the Surprising Science of Animals' Inner Lives
Karen Shanor
"Amazing, moving and enlightening. Bats Sing, Mice Giggle presents the latest findings on the intimate lives of animals with great elegance. I recommend it wholeheartedly." Larry King
"Did you know that spiders taste with their feet, that a decapitated cockroach can live for two weeks, that a certain type of parrotfish wraps itself in a sort of foul-smelling snot before
taking a nap, and that ants play? I didn't until I read Bats Sing, Mice Giggle." New Scientist
Marcus of Umbria: What an Italian Dog Taught an American Girl About Love
Justine Van der Leun
"A sweet, disarming story finds a young New York editor venturing to Italy to pursue romance with a sexy gardener and ending up falling for a neglected dog instead. In her straightforward, unembellished prose, Van der Leun recounts how she shucked her job editing the Letters page for an unidentified lifestyle magazine because she wasn't good at getting along with the other grasping workers, broke up with a perfect modern man who was also Mr. Boring, and spent a summer month at an acquaintance's house in Collelungo, a sheep-farming village of 200 souls in Umbria. There she met one of the town's sons, the handsome, earnest gardener Emanuele, whose entire hard-working, ample-eating, non-English-speaking family she grew to know and love over the year she returned to live in the town. But she was appalled by the younger brother's treatment of his animals, specifically the dogs he used for hunting, and nursed to health a sadly starving young English pointer she named Marcus. Over the year, the relationship with Emanuele did not blossom; but Van der Leun became crazy about her sleek, dark-headed fast-running bird dog-a female, it turned out, who needed quickly to be spayed. The author manages to capture the lovely, vanishing Old World ways of these tightly knit people, while also interweaving a heart-melting tale." Publishers Weekly
The Wauchula Woods Accord: Toward a New Understanding of Animals
Charles Siebert
"While visiting a primate sanctuary for a story on captive chimpanzees, Siebert (Wickerby: An Urban Pastoral) encounters Roger, a chimpanzee formerly used in the entertainment industry, who seems to remember him. In one transformative night, Siebert sits up until dawn with Roger, repairing their apparently severed bond, pondering the meaning of humanity's relationship to nonhuman animals, and recounting some of the ugly history of exotic animals killed, captured, bred, and abused by humans in the name of entertainment and research. While Roger seems to find healing in the interaction, the human finds metaphysical escape. Seeing in Roger reflections of himself, Siebert concludes that a self-centered humanity may stop abusing nonhumans if we perceive them to be part of ourselves. While his musings occasionally come across as self-absorbed, Siebert's writing is fresh and evocative, and his sensitive and sustained attention to Roger is moving. Given the popularity of human/animal friendship stories, this book will likely be of interest to readers in both public and academic libraries." Leslie J. Patterson, Chicago P.L. (from School Library Journal)
Dogs and Devotion
The Monks of New Skete
"Perhaps one of the reasons we are so devoted to our dogs is that they help us become who we're supposed to be."
"'How easy to get lost in a dog's eyes!" write the Monks of New Skete in this new book celebrating our lives with our dogs. Far from getting lost, though, you might very well find what really matters most to you as you read through these soul-stirring meditations and enjoy the heartwarming photographs of dogs doing what they do best--being themselves." Amazon.com
Hope from the Heart of Horses: How Horses Teach Us About Presence, Strength, and Awareness
Kathy Pike
"Hope . . . From the Heart of Horses explores and celebrates the relationship and bond possible between horses and humans. Each chapter offers a life lesson about trusting one's instincts, honestly addressing emotions, achieving clarity in communications, and releasing negative thoughts.
Because survival depends on being highly tuned to the thoughts and feelings of others, horses sense human intentions rather than what a person offers in facial expressions, which creates a remarkable effect on the relationship between these two distinctly different species. Among the moving stories the author relates are a horse named Hope who teaches the difference between hope and faith; an abused horse's background bringing up old memories and helping the author to move on; a young Olympic equestrienne hopeful who discovers and reaffirms her self-esteem; and a corporate training session in which one participant achieves great success merely by being honest about her fears.
As you see how these people grow deeper into themselves as they learn the horse's way, you, too, will be inspired to explore and apply the deep and ever-lasting connection and communication between horses and humans." Amazon.com
Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World
Vicki Myron
One frigid Midwestern winter night in 1988, a ginger kitten was shoved into the after-hours book-return slot at the public library in Spencer, Iowa. And in this tender story, Myron, the library director, tells of the impact the cat, named DeweyReadmore Books, had on the library and its patrons, and on Myron herself. Through her developing relationship with the feline, Myron recounts the economic and social history of Spencer as well as her own success story-despite an alcoholic husband, living on welfare, and health problems ranging from the difficult birth of her daughter, Jodi, to breast cancer. After her divorce, Myron graduated college (the first in her family) and stumbled into a library job. She quickly rose to become director, realizing early on that this was a job I could love for the rest of my life. Dewey, meanwhile, brings disabled children out of their shells, invites businessmen to pet him with one hand while holding the Wall Street Journal with the other, eats rubber bands and becomes a media darling. The book is not only a tribute to a cat-anthropomorphized to a degree that can strain credulity (Dewey plays hide and seek with Myron, can read her thoughts, is mortified by his hair balls)-it's a love letter to libraries. Publishers Weekly (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
For the Love of a Dog
Patricia B. McConnell
"Animal behaviorist, dog trainer, syndicated radio talk show host and prolific author on all things canine, McConnell (The Other End of the Leash) presents a compelling combination of stories, science and practical advice to show how understanding emotions in both people and dogs can improve owners' relationships with their pets. This is more than a simple dog-training book: much of what McConnell discusses concerns how dog owners can learn "the language" of dog by recognizing important signals and reading them correctly. She provides numerous helpful examples of how owners can observe dog behavior, especially differences in posture and facial expressions, in order to help dogs be better behaved and help dog owners to be better handlers; her discussion of the meaning of a dog's "tongue flicks" is alone worth the price of the book. Her overall goal is to help owners provide their pets with "a sense of calm, peaceful benevolence," and she skewers current dog-training fads that emphasize "dominance" over a dog. "Don't fool yourself: if you yell at your dog for something he did twenty seconds ago, you're not training him; you're merely expressing your own anger." Publishers Weekly
Dog Years: a Memoir
Mark Doty
Starred Review. "Award-winning memoirist (Firebird) and poet (School of the Arts) Doty explores, with compassion and intelligence, the complicated, loving territory inhabited by devoted dogs and their loyal humans. In 1994, when the author's longtime lover was dying of AIDS, beloved pet Arden kept the surviving partner afloat. A new adoptee, the rambunctious Beau, in his "sloppy dog way," becomes a part of the tribe and carries some of the burden of grief. Doty says Beau "carried something else for me too, which was my will to live." In a time of devastating pain, as well as in happier times, Doty's two dogs are the "secret heroes of my own vitality." The dog characters in the book are irresistible, and the arcs of their lives are delineated with the tenderness and passion of the truly smitten. Arden's quiet nobility and slow decline breaks the heart, while Beau's goofy enthusiasm peaks with youth and mellows in illness. With a marvelous ability to present the pain of mourning with a poet's delicate hand, and an irrepressible instinct for joy, Doty delivers a soulful love story which illuminates no less than the big human mysteries: attachment, death, grief, loyalty, happiness. The book nimbly sidesteps sentimentality and lands squarely on a philosophical, inquisitive tone as intellectually evocative as it is emotionally resonant." Publishers Weekly
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