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A comprehensive, humane, and bemused tour of the dog-human relationship, Dog's Best Friend combines anecdote, research, and reportage to illuminate our complex rapport with our cherished canine companions. Tracking our national obsession with an animal that now outnumbers children in American households, Mark Derr chronicles the evolution of "the culture of the dog" from the prehistoric domestication of tamed wolves to the modern horrors of overbreeding and inbreeding. Passionate about his subject and intent on sharing his zeal, Derr defends dogs with wit and flare, producing here a quirky, informative, and fitting tribute to our love affair with canines big and small.
It is an accepted fact of evolution and history that the dog evolved from the wolf. But the question of how wolf became dog has remained a mystery, obscured by myth and legend. How the Dog Became the Dog argues that the dog was an evolutionary inevitability because humans and wolves were made for each other: both were social species who lived and hunted as family units, and cooperation was essential to their survival. The natural temperament of, and social structure surrounding, humans and wolves is so similar that as soon as they met, they recognised themselves in each other. How the Dog Became the Dog suggests that the domestication of the dog was a biological and cultural process that began with mutual cooperation and has taken a number of radical turns. At the end of the last Ice Age, the first dogs emerged, with their humans, from their refuges against the cold. In the 18th century, humans began to exercise control of dog reproduction, life, and death, completing the domestication of the wolf begun long ago. Combining the most recent scientific research with stunning and original insights, this book shows that dogs made us human, just as humans changed dogs.
“A consummate and loving tribute to canines as well as a comprehensive history, seamlessly blending facts, anecdotes, and ideas.” —Kirkus Reviews In this revelatory book, Mark Derr looks at the ways in which we have used canines—as sled dogs and sheepdogs, hounds and Seeing Eye dogs, guard dogs, show dogs, and bomb-sniffing dogs—as he tracks changes in American culture and society. A Dog’s History of America weaves a remarkable tapestry of heroism, betrayal, tragedy, kindness, abuse, and unique companionship. The result is an enlightening perspective on American history through the eyes of humanity’s best friend. “Includes stories of heroic dogs like Satan, who in WWI dodged ...
For 500 years, visitors to Florida have discovered magic. In Some Kind of Paradise, an eloquent social and environmental history of the state, Mark Derr describes how this exotic land is fast becoming a victim of its own allure. Written with both tenderness and alarm, Derr's book presents competing views of Florida: a paradise to be protected and nurtured or a frontier to be exploited and conquered.
When women and children begin to vanish, the people of Edge village summon a Huntress. Though she is long due for a break and exhausted from her previous assignment, Adamina accepts the assignment and heads for Edge. But when she arrives, the simple assignment she anticipated proves instead to be complicated—complicated enough she must consult with a witch. A beautiful, compelling witch that makes Adamina sharply aware of her own lonely life, and tempts her to make it less lonely. Assuming the forest doesn't kill them first.
Prince Allen has trained his entire life to follow in the footsteps of his illustrious mother, who has made their kingdom one of the wealthiest and most influential in the empire. For the past few years he has trained to become the new consort of the High King. The only thing no one prepared him for was the stubborn, arrogant High King himself, who declares Allen useless and throws him out of court. High King Sarrica is ruling an empire at war, and that war will grow exponentially worse if his carefully laid plans do not come to fruition. He's overwhelmed and needs help, as much as he hates to admit it, but it must be someone like his late consort: a soldier, someone who understands war, who is not unfamiliar with or afraid of the harsher elements of rule. What he doesn't need is the delicate, pretty little politician foisted on him right as everything goes wrong.
"Raymond Pierotti and Brandy Fogg change the narrative about how wolves became dogs and, in turn, humanity's best friend. Rather than recount how people mastered and tamed an aggressive, dangerous species, the authors describe coevolution and mutualism. Wolves, particularly ones shunned by their packs, most likely initiated the relationship with Paleolithic humans, forming bonds built on mutually recognized skills and emotional capacity. This interdisciplinary study draws on sources from evolutionary biology as well as tribal and indigenous histories to produce an intelligent, insightful, and often unexpected story of cooperative hunting, wolves protecting camps, and wolf-human companionship"--Dust jacket flap.
"We need a new way of seeing!" --Jennifer Ferguson, South African musician & Former MP, African National Congress Is abortion on "demand" a woman's right, or a wrong inflicted on women? Is it a mark of liberation, or a sign that women are not yet free? From Anglo-Irish writer Mary Wollstonecraft to Kenyan environmentalist and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, many eighteenth- through twenty-first-century feminists have opposed it as violence against fetal lives arising from violence against female lives. This more inclusive, surprisingly old-but-new vision of reproductive choice is called prolife feminism. This book's original edition in 1995 offered brilliant essays on aborti...
"Exploring the natural history of these creatures, the Coppingers explain how the village dogs of Vietnam, India, Africa, and Mexico are strikingly similar. These feral dogs, argue the Coppingers, are in fact the real representative dogs, nearly uniform in size and shape and incredibly self-sufficient. Drawing on nearly five decades of research, they show how dogs actually domesticated themselves in order to become such sufficient scavengers of human refuse. The Coppingers also examine the behavioral characteristics that enable dogs to live successfully and to reproduce, unconstrained by humans, in environments that we ordinarily do not think of as dog- friendly."--From publisher description.
"Examines the political career of Reubin Askew, whose election as governor in 1970 marked the beginning of a golden age in Florida's politics"--