A warm homage to a special bond.
A pet dies. Then what?
“When we open our hearts to animals,” Bartels observes, “death is the inevitable price.” At the age of 5, she grieved for her first pet: a fish. A bird died when she was 9; a friend’s hamster, in her care, unexpectedly succumbed; another fish died when she was in college; and she’s mourned many other animals, too, including several dogs. In her appealing debut book, the author examines the process of grief that follows the loss of a pet, recounting her own experiences; talking with veterinarians, ministers, archaeologists, and many pet owners; reading pet owners’ memoirs; and looking at ways that other cultures deal with animals’ deaths. She also recounts her visits to pet cemeteries, some of which allow humans and pets to be buried together. Japan has established hundreds of pet cemeteries, many operated by Buddhist temples. At Dog Mountain, in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, founded by an artist known for his woodblock prints of his black Lab, a small chapel welcomes pet owners who come to “reflect on and memorialize and remember their pet” with photographs and written tributes. Although Bartels acknowledges that pet ownership falls largely to White Americans with disposable income, she discovered that attachment to pets has a long history. For example, an Egyptologist specializing in animal mummies told her that some mummified animals surely were beloved pets. Grieving pet owners have resorted to taxidermy and even cloning to keep some physical evidence of their pet’s existence. At a cost of $50,000, though, cloning is a choice most people can’t afford. Bartels warmly describes her connections to all of her pets, even her first fish. Pets, she writes, “bolster your emotional state,” accept your hugs and kisses, listen to your most intimate confidences, and provide “companionship, completely without judgment.” Because sadness over an animal’s death is rarely shared, the author hopes her book will help grieving pet owners find solace.
A warm homage to a special bond.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-358-21233-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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