The cat publishing craze may be going to the dogs: Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Hidden Life of Dogs is a bestseller, while a grinning canine recently graced the cover of Newsweek. And now here comes a rewarding, if scattered, potpourri of essays, columns, and miscellany—mostly dog-related—from the writer who may know more than any other about dogs and their desires, resonances, and destinies. As in her earlier books (Bandit, 1991, etc.), Hearne again blends philosophical expertise (she's a fellow at Yale's Institution for Social and Policy Studies) with the vast knowledge she's earned during more than 25 years as an animal trainer. The material ranges widely—beginning with slight but well-turned columns that first appeared in the Los Angeles Times, covering matters from a ``therapy dog'' who works with the sick to the banes and delights of tortoise-owning; moving on to slightly longer, chewier pieces that celebrate Airedales and, in ``Beware of the Dog!'' James Thurber's relish for dogs and dog-writing; skirting silliness with snappish advice columns (``Dear Josephine Trainer'') originally published in a Pit Bull Terrier newsletter; and flowering into profundity in a final section, ``Possibilities,'' comprised of four essays that explore the nature of animal happiness. One of these pieces, ``Wittgenstein's Lion,'' offers a meditation on human-animal communication; the others—through looking at the work of an orangutan trainer, the ethics of pet ownership, and animals' divorce from human values as exemplified in the Book of Job—elaborate Hearne's opposition to the animal-rights movement (``an owner is the only rights granter a dog can know....the owner that belongs to him'') and laud ``the wonders of animal-human work'' (``knowledge of animals...is knowledge of the divine''). ``All happiness is animal happiness,'' says Hearne—including, then, the reader happiness produced by this smart, passionate, and challenging work.
Pub Date: Jan. 12, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-019016-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!
It should come as no surprise that the gifted author of The Sea Around Usand its successors can take another branch of science—that phase of biology indicated by the term ecology—and bring it so sharply into focus that any intelligent layman can understand what she is talking about.
Understand, yes, and shudder, for she has drawn a living portrait of what is happening to this balance nature has decreed in the science of life—and what man is doing (and has done) to destroy it and create a science of death. Death to our birds, to fish, to wild creatures of the woods—and, to a degree as yet undetermined, to man himself. World War II hastened the program by releasing lethal chemicals for destruction of insects that threatened man’s health and comfort, vegetation that needed quick disposal. The war against insects had been under way before, but the methods were relatively harmless to other than the insects under attack; the products non-chemical, sometimes even introduction of other insects, enemies of the ones under attack. But with chemicals—increasingly stronger, more potent, more varied, more dangerous—new chain reactions have set in. And ironically, the insects are winning the war, setting up immunities, and re-emerging, their natural enemies destroyed. The peril does not stop here. Waters, even to the underground water tables, are contaminated; soils are poisoned. The birds consume the poisons in their insect and earthworm diet; the cattle, in their fodder; the fish, in the waters and the food those waters provide. And humans? They drink the milk, eat the vegetables, the fish, the poultry. There is enough evidence to point to the far-reaching effects; but this is only the beginning,—in cancer, in liver disorders, in radiation perils…This is the horrifying story. It needed to be told—and by a scientist with a rare gift of communication and an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Already the articles taken from the book for publication in The New Yorkerare being widely discussed. Book-of-the-Month distribution in October will spread the message yet more widely.
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1962
ISBN: 061825305X
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1962
APPRECIATIONS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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