A sound introduction to a relatively new area of study, both for those who share their households with animals and those who...
A British animal expert examines the complex, evolving connection between dogs and cats and their human companions.
Initially a biologist, Bradshaw (Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet, 2013, etc.) has gradually turned his attention to anthrozoology, the study of “the personal relationships that people have with animals and, to a lesser extent, that animals have with people.” After some soul-searching, he decided to use the traditional term “pet” rather than “animal companion” to describe the bond between the animals he studies and the people who live with them, and that common-sensical choice is reflected in much of his analysis. The author clearly enjoys the company of dogs and cats (other pets are mentioned only in passing), but his pleasure in hanging out with them doesn’t prevent him from gently casting doubt on the alleged benefits they offer to humans. He cites research, for example, that suggests that people with cats actually live slightly shorter, and more anxious, lives than those without and that the positive effects of owning a dog may be attributed mainly to the increased exercise and socialization involved in walking it. The most intriguing chapters deal with the roles of these domesticated animals in historical or current hunter-gatherer societies, where the human breast-feeding of dogs, pigs, and other animals was relatively common. Bradshaw also explores the psychological projection of human feelings onto pets and the effect of that projection on pet and human, and he speculates about the genetic basis of affection for animals, more prevalent in some people than others. While the text sometimes drifts into repetition, and many of Bradshaw’s points will already be familiar to readers, his gentle warmth and intelligence make the book enjoyable.
A sound introduction to a relatively new area of study, both for those who share their households with animals and those who never would.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-465-06481-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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