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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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RATTLESNAKE

PORTRAIT OF A PREDATOR

by Manny Rubio ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1998

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Rubio, a photographer, provides some 250 color photographs of North American rattlesnakes, as well as a useful, succinct summary of what’s known about rattlesnake evolution, anatomy, and behavior. The photographs of the snakes in their natural terrains stress the perfection of their camouflage—many can coil perfectly into their surroundings. The shots also capture the extraordinary beauty and grace of these lethal (though generally shy) creatures. Several chapters are devoted to the impact rattlesnakes have had on American art (especially the art—and religion—of some southwestern Indian tribes) and the American imagination (there is a chapter on churches that practice the handling of rattlesnakes as part of an ecstatic communion with God). While it’s unlikely that Rubio’s work will much change the attitude of those who view the rattlesnake as a candidate for extermination, it may sway those still undecided into a more balanced, and even appreciative, view of an ancient, resourceful, and often quite beautiful species. A particularly handsome work of natural history.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998

ISBN: 1-56098-808-8

Page Count: 272

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998

Categories:

NATURE

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LOST WOODS

THE DISCOVERED WRITING OF RACHEL CARSON

by Rachel Carson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2, 1998

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Biographer Lear (Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature, 1997) knits together here a number of Rachel Carson’s writings—often much more personal, quirky, and searching than her celebrated books—that add meat to her body of literary/scientific writing. Carson published just four books during her lifetime, but she also cranked out speeches and articles and newspaper work, kept copious field notes, and wrote thousands of letters. Lear has selected from this material a chronological sampling as a guide to Carson’s evolution as a writer and a natural scientist. Many of the pieces will be new to most readers, even if their tone—of “awakening an emotional response to nature”—is trademark Carson. This collection includes pieces on Carson the hard-core birder: there are both field jottings and essays on chimney swifts and warblers and gulls, and a rapt couple of days on a hawk watch in Pennsylvania. She wrote liner notes to Debussy’s La Mer, music which she comfortably interprets to jibe with her notion of the ocean’s mysteries. She was certainly one of the first to give the importance of island biogeography more than a passing nod; an essay on the destruction of rare island habitats, and the extinction of island species, has been included by Lear. And her anxiety over atomic weapons, especially when byproducts are dumped in the oceans, is spelled out here in her preface to the second edition of The Sea Around Us. As always, touching all aspects of her work are her puzzlings over the simple fact of life and her druidic appreciation of natural cycles and the beauty, excitement, and inscrutable elements of the natural world. Carson devotees will already be familiar with some of this material; the more casual (if no less admiring) fan will find in this collection an engaging glimpse into the breadth of Carson’s curiosity and the fashioning of her public voice as a defender of the environment.