An uplifting story of hope about how both dogs and humans need "a sense that they are not helpless victims."
How training an incorrigible puppy helped an internationally renowned animal behaviorist recover from “multiple traumas.”
During her 25-year career, McConnell (For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend, 2006, etc.) has trained both aggressive dogs "voicelessly telling me how frightened they were" and their owners, many of whom were unable to understand their pets' signals without her direction. As the author notes, throughout her career, she has “used science, art, and empathy to help ‘problem dogs’ have a voice; to listen to what they are trying to tell us and help them and their families be happy together.” She has always felt tremendous empathy for these “fearful, frightened dogs,” whose self-expressions were often misunderstood. McConnell explains how she could never let her guard down because she was scarred by painful events in her past, including sexual exploitation and witnessing a man fall to his death in front of her. She carried these scars into adulthood, resulting in a constant sense of hypervigilance; her “startle response,” she writes, was set to “PANIC.” Though she had her hands full living with three older dogs in varying states of frailty, she decided to adopt Will, a border collie puppy who was alternately a snuggler and a terror. She had no way of knowing for sure, but she believed that Will shared similar prior experiences of shock and trauma. Will gave the author firsthand knowledge that aggressive dogs are often fearful and misunderstood, and they don’t have a reliable method for expressing it. McConnell’s constant struggles to soothe Will finally gave her the courage to speak about her suffering and begin talk therapy and other methods of healing and relaxation. In addition to information sure to appeal to dog lovers, the author provides a compassionate account of the reclamation of her life from abuse and shame.
An uplifting story of hope about how both dogs and humans need "a sense that they are not helpless victims."Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5015-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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