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THE DOG MERCHANTS

Name: THE DOG MERCHANTS
Author: Kim Kavin
ISBN: 978-1-68177-140-3

INSIDE THE BIG BUSINESS OF BREEDERS, PET STORES, AND RESCUERS

by Kim Kavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 2, 2016

A scathing indictment of an industry run amok; belongs on every pet lover’s bookshelf.

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A hard-hitting exploration of the idea of “dogs as a product.”

Freelance journalist Kavin (Little Boy Blue: A Puppy's Rescue from Death Row and His Owner's Journey for Truth, 2012, etc.) compares the experience of attending America's biggest legal dog auction to what it might be like watching orphaned children auctioned based on looks. To compound her outrage, her own beloved mutts, whom she thinks of as family, would be considered worthless. The recognition that, “like that big case of meat in the supermarket, [the auction dogs] are ultimately a product” inspired her to investigate the $11 billion global market. Kavin estimates that “some thirty million pet dogs are brought home around the world each year.” To think of one's dog as a product to be bought and sold for profit is repugnant to pet lovers, but for the author, it also opens the possibility of using collective bargaining power as clout to force a higher standard of their treatment, using “the only language everyone in the dog industry understands: the language of money.” Despite the size of the industry, many of the worst offenders are “small players in the big global web,” and our cumulative decisions as consumers are important. It’s clear that Kavin has meticulously researched the industry, and she notes that in terms of salability of a particular dog, appearance usually matters more than temperament. “The majority of breeds…were developed just like today's Louis Vuitton scarves or Jimmy Choo shoes or Fendi clutches,” she writes, in order to “visually announce a person’s economic standing.” Televised competitions compound the problem. To counter this, Kavin helped launched the website dogmerchants.com, an encyclopedic database that will serve as a “repository of information about pooches and the people who sell them.”

A scathing indictment of an industry run amok; belongs on every pet lover’s bookshelf.

Pub Date: May 2, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-68177-140-3

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Pegasus

Review Posted Online: March 7, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016

Categories:

NATURE

- BOOK REVIEW
LITTLE BOY BLUE
by Kim Kavin

- BOOK REVIEW
DREAM CRUISES
by Kim Kavin

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SHAKE THEM 'SIMMONS DOWN

AND OTHER ADVENTURES IN THE LIVES OF TREES

by Janet Lembke ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 1996

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Arboreal musings—learned, canny, homespun, graceful—from one of our better natural history writers. Trees are one of Lembke's (River Time, 1989) joys, as are rivers and birds and butterflies, all given lavish attention here; a naturalist, Lembke just can't keep her eyes still, thank goodness. This gallimaufry of tree lore—historical and medicinal; trees as food, as Eve's temptation, as just plain awesome—is a wide-ranging delight, and of the species covered, each gets a chapter unto itself: catalpa and sassafras, osage orange and yucca and loblolly pine, to name a few. Lembke has a special talent for commingling intimacy with erudition. One essay will explore the backgrounds of Druids and Green Men, witches in the Teutonic forest, Baba Yaga and her chicken-footed woodland abode; another will mull over why the author has never warmed to the yellow poplar. She takes a personal interest in the trees on her North Carolina riverfront property: a black tupelo draped with mistletoe; a persimmon humming with bees in spring, a celebration of red berries in autumn, harvested with a mighty shake; the curative properties of rabbit tobacco, known to foragers as ``life everlasting''; the sweet gum, pantry to the yellow-bellied sapsucker and bedroom to the orchard oriole. Why did Thomas Jefferson revere the pecan? Why did the pawpaw go to heaven and the pepper to hell? And can the sumac truly allow one to take wing? All these are asked and answered with nimble deliberation. Eighteen essays all told, with a few poems thrown in, and recipes for teas and jellies, puddings and zabaglione, and not a lemon in the bunch. We breathe the exhalations of the trees, and as Lembke testifies, they fuel a hundred more poetic concerns. (line drawings, not seen)

Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1996

ISBN: 1-55821-350-3

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Lyons Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION | NATURE

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FULL HOUSE

THE SPREAD OF EXCELLENCE FROM PLATO TO DARWIN

by Stephen Jay Gould ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1996

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Now hear this: Evolution is not progressive. We (humans) are not the be-all and end-all of nature's plan. You've heard these lines before: They are quintessentially Gould. In this short volume Gould (Dinosaur in a Haystack, 1995, etc.) elaborates on this theme. Among the examples he advances is one that should prove dear to the hearts of baseball fans: Why, Gould asks, are there no .400 hitters anymore? The answer requires looking not at batting but at how the game of baseball has varied over time. There has been a general improvement in play so that the normal curve of batting averages no longer has a tail trailing off to the right where the few .400 stars were to be found. Instead, in Gould's phrase, we have hit a right wall—a boundary reflecting the limits of human performance. A second, longer, and more complex example deals with evolutionary data. If we eliminated human hubris, we would see that it is bacteria that were in the beginning, are now, and ever will be the most populous and successful kingdom—virtually at the left wall boundary in terms of minimally complex organisms capable of life. Over time, there was nothing else for life to do but to expand to the right. However, using fossil records, Gould demonstrates that there was no directionality: Descendants didn't always get more complex—they could just as easily revert to less complex forms. What befuddles the issue is the matter of cultural ``evolution''—a word Gould would strike in favor of the word ``change.'' Cultural inventions (including reading and writing) have enabled great leaps of technical ``progress'' in nanoseconds of time, reckoned by evolutionary standards. As a species, however, we remain an anomalous tail in the full house of life on earth. So we should accept our place with becoming humility. Gould fans will be charmed at the cogency and cleverness of his arguments—but expect a wall of opposition from pious and diehard progressivists. (50 illustrations, not seen) (Author tour)