Here are 100 books that How the Dog Became the Dog fans have personally recommended if you like
How the Dog Became the Dog.
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Coming from a family of dog lovers, I have lived a lifetime of loving dogs and reading (and writing) books about dogs. My childhood animal books were “dog-eared” for sure, but when I began to read dog books like those on my list, my relationship with dogs became deeper and richer beyond how a dog looks or acts; these books opened a door on our mutual history and how our lives fit together. As our oldest animal partner, dogs choose to travel this shared path with us. A gift to us, it is now our responsibility to honor them.
I cannot imagine my life with animals without the understanding I have drawn from this book. While biologists and the public have long viewed domestication as a form of forced servitude, Budiansky details another revolutionary theory that some special animal species “choose” to throw their futures in with humans.
How this happened is a fascinating story that challenges our long-held assumptions and reveals our huge debt and responsibility to these animals who chose to live with us. This book is the foundation stone of my work with dogs and other domesticated animals.
Animal rights extremists argue that eating meat is murder and that pets are slaves. This compelling reappraisal of the human-animal bond, however, shows that domestication of animals is not an act of exploitation but a brilliantly successful evolutionary strategy that has benefited humans and animals alike.
"Budiansky's slim, elegant discourse is a persuasive counterweight to the pastoral delusions of sentimentalists intent on seeing humans as malevolently at odds with the noble animal kingdom."-Manuela Hoelterhoff, Wall Street Journal
"Forcefully argued and eloquent."-Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times
"A subtle look at the mysteries of evolution and a stinging response…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Coming from a family of dog lovers, I have lived a lifetime of loving dogs and reading (and writing) books about dogs. My childhood animal books were “dog-eared” for sure, but when I began to read dog books like those on my list, my relationship with dogs became deeper and richer beyond how a dog looks or acts; these books opened a door on our mutual history and how our lives fit together. As our oldest animal partner, dogs choose to travel this shared path with us. A gift to us, it is now our responsibility to honor them.
I have always been fascinated and in awe of working livestock guardian dogs. One of our first human/dog partnerships, this group of dogs possesses a unique set of genetically inherited behaviors.
The Coppingers' research into how livestock guardian dogs think and work was groundbreaking and instrumental in promoting the use of these working dogs for predator coexistence in North America.
Expanding their work to include sled, herding, and hunting dogs, the Coppingers also explain how these specific dog breeds acquired their special traits.
Marking the first time that dogs have been explained in such detail by eminent researchers, Dogs is a work of wide appeal, as absorbing as it is enlightening.
Drawing on insight gleaned from forty-five years of raising, training, and studying the behaviors of dogs worldwide, Lorna and Raymond Coppinger explore the fascinating processes by which dog breeds have evolved into their unique shapes and behaviors. Concentrating on five types of dogs—modern household dogs, village dogs, livestock-guarding dogs, sled dogs, and herding dogs—the Coppingers, internationally recognized canine ethologists and consummate dog lovers, examine our canine companions from a unique biological viewpoint.…
Coming from a family of dog lovers, I have lived a lifetime of loving dogs and reading (and writing) books about dogs. My childhood animal books were “dog-eared” for sure, but when I began to read dog books like those on my list, my relationship with dogs became deeper and richer beyond how a dog looks or acts; these books opened a door on our mutual history and how our lives fit together. As our oldest animal partner, dogs choose to travel this shared path with us. A gift to us, it is now our responsibility to honor them.
I found this book to be a deeply humane exploration of our human-dog relationship from prehistory to the present. It presents the essential ways that dogs changed us and acknowledges the ever-lurking, awful temptation to exploit or harm our oldest friend.
Hobgood-Ostler weaves together canine-human archaeology, history, and literature to show us how we would not have flourished without our dogs, from the earliest days of our partnership to our current lives in which dogs have become actual family members, offering companionship, support, and love.
Canines and humans have depended upon one another for tens of thousands of years. Humans took the initial steps of domesticating canines, but somewhere through the millennia, dogs began dramatically to affect the future of their masters. In A Dog's History of the World, Laura Hobgood-Oster chronicles the canine-human story. From the earliest cave paintings depicting the primitive canine-human relationship to the modern model of dogs as family members, Hobgood-Oster reveals how the relationship has been marked by both love and exploitation.Canines have aided and been heir to humankind's ever-increasing thirst for scientific advancements, empire building, and personal satisfaction. They…
Coming from a family of dog lovers, I have lived a lifetime of loving dogs and reading (and writing) books about dogs. My childhood animal books were “dog-eared” for sure, but when I began to read dog books like those on my list, my relationship with dogs became deeper and richer beyond how a dog looks or acts; these books opened a door on our mutual history and how our lives fit together. As our oldest animal partner, dogs choose to travel this shared path with us. A gift to us, it is now our responsibility to honor them.
Like most dog lovers, I love the incredible diversity of modern dog breeds, but I thought very little about the dogs already here in the Western Hemisphere before the European colonists arrived.
Derr tells the story of the First Peoples and their dog companions, who traveled to the corners of both continents. But then the story becomes one of tragic slaughter and conquest for both people and dogs.
What happened to these Native American dog breeds? Did any remnants survive to interact with the new settlers? What new types and breeds emerged? How did they and their descendants shape American history? I found all the answers fascinating.
In the New World, wherever humans have gone, dogs have been their close companions. In this revelatory history, Mark Derr looks at the ways in which we have used canines - as sled dogs, sheepdogs, Seeing Eye dogs, guard dogs show dogs and more - as he tracks changes in American culture and society. Derr 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.
I have loved dogs since I was a kid and have been fascinated by a scientific approach to animal behavior since I was in college. About fifteen years ago I found a way to meld my love of dogs with my scientific expertise in animal behavior by studying how and why dogs love people. My quest to understand the human-dog relationship has taken me around the world: from hunting with native people in Nicaragua to examining the remains of a woman buried with a dog 12,000 years ago in Israel. And yes, I really do get to cuddle puppies for a living!
So (so) much has been written about Charles Darwin but this short book captures a side of the great man’s life that had been hiding in plain sight: his love of dogs. When Darwin was a youngster his father complained he “care[d] for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching.” There was only one period of Darwin’s adulthood when he was not living with dogs and that was the five years he spent going 'round the world on a boat named – ironically enough – the Beagle. A love of dogs informed Darwin’s thinking on everything from marriage to his epochal theory of evolution by natural selection.
Anyone who has ever looked at a dog waiting to go for a walk and thought there was something age-old and almost human in its sad expression can take comfort in knowing that Charles Darwin did exactly the same thing. But Darwin didn't just stop at feeling that there was some connection between humans and dogs. A great naturalist, pioneer of the theory of evolution, and incurable dog-lover, Darwin used his much-loved dogs as evidence in his continuing argument that all animals, including human beings, descended from one common ancestor. Emma Townshend looks at Darwin's life through a uniquely canine…
Born in England but living now in America’s mountain west, I am sucker for landscapes that dance with unusual plants and animals. I have been a commercial fisherman, a tool librarian, and a back-country park ranger. These days, I’m an award-winning public philosopher and author. I have written books and articles about powerful emerging technologies. However, I realized a few years ago that wild animals are an antidote to the technological and commercial forces that can flatten our world. From art painted on cave walls millennia ago to the toys we still give to our children, animals are an important part of human identity. I celebrate this in my work.
I knew, like most people, that pet dogs are descended from wild wolves. But when do you get to see this natural history play out in front of your eyes?
Romeo, a wild wolf that spent winters on a frozen lake at the foot of the Mendenhall Glacier, gave the skiers and dog-walkers of Juneau, Alaska, a lesson in the intelligence of our wild brethren. I marveled at Romeo’s gentle playfulness. I admired the wisdom that prevented him from getting too close to people, preferring to play with the pooches that people let off their leashes.
Jans’ book reveals how authorities struggled to know what to do with this animal that moved so easily back and forth between the wild and the civilized. Romeo’s end provides plenty of reason for reflection.
A Wolf Called Romeo is the remarkable story of a wolf who returned again and again to interact with the people and dogs of Juneau, Alaska, living on the edges of their community, engaging in an improbable, awe-inspiring inter-species dance and bringing the wild into sharp focus.
At first the people of Juneau were guarded, torn between caution and curiosity. But as Romeo began to tag along with cross-country skiers on their daily jaunts, play fetch with local dogs, or simply lie near author Nick Jans and nap under the sun, they came to accept Romeo, and he them. For…
An Heir of Realms tells the tale of two young heroines—a dragon rider and a portal jumper—who fight dragon-like parasites to save their realms from extinction.
Rhoswen is training as a Realm Rider to work with dragons and burn away the Narxon swarming into her realm. Rhoswen’s dream is to…
I’ve been mad about dinosaurs and ancient life since I was seven. I have been amazingly lucky to be able to develop a career as a professional palaeontologist and to be able to research and talk about the subject. We were first to show the original colours of dinosaur feathers, and this discovery provides a perfect way to open the discussion about how palaeontologists know what they say they know. In my books, I seek to amaze, amuse and inform. I have written many books, including pop science, textbooks, technical-scientific works, and books for children, and every year brings new discoveries to be transmitted to the world.
This is about dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts, but it’s unique and unusual.
Author Dean Lomax has run to ground some of the most extraordinary fossils ever found, and artist Bob Nicholls turns them into stunning reconstructions. Here you can read about a beetle within a lizard within a snake, a giant beaver that made huge corkscrew burrows 3 meters deep, the mammal that ate dinosaurs, insects caught in the act of mating, and dinosaurs with cancer.
What I like is that, weird and wonderful as each story may be, each is based strictly on the fossils and reasonable interpretations of those fossils. Dinosaurs may spark the imagination, but as scientists, it’s important to show people how we come to our conclusions, and that needs evidence and reason in a discussion.
Fossils allow us to picture the forms of life that inhabited the earth eons ago. But we long to know more: how did these animals actually behave? We are fascinated by the daily lives of our fellow creatures-how they reproduce and raise their young, how they hunt their prey or elude their predators, and more. What would it be like to see prehistoric animals as they lived and breathed?
From dinosaurs fighting to their deaths to elephant-sized burrowing ground sloths, this book takes readers on a global journey deep into the earth's past. Locked in Time showcases fifty of the…
I'm an experimental social psychologist and Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. I grew up in Hungary, and after an adventurous escape I ended up in Sydney. I received my DPhil and DSc degrees from the University of Oxford, and I spent various periods working at Oxford, Stanford, Heidelberg, and Giessen. For my work I received the Order of Australia, as well as the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, the Alexander von Humboldt Prize, and a Rockefeller Fellowship. As somebody who experienced totalitarian communism firsthand, I am very interested in the reasons for the recent spread of totalitarian, tribal ideologies, potentially undermining Western liberalism, undoubtedly the most successful civilization in human history.
This book is a real tour de force, applying the rationale of self-governing and naturally emerging evolutionary mechanisms to explain a wide variety of social, biological, cultural, and civilizational processes.
The book offers wonderful insights into such topics as the emergence of creative ideas, the growth of cities, the evolution of language, why state-controlled health care and education systems are often inefficient, the resilience of free-market economies, the rise of morality and trust as a consequence of natural social interactions, and much more besides.
Readable, entertaining, and full of incredibly useful information.
The New York Times bestselling author of The Rational Optimist and Genome returns with a fascinating, brilliant argument for evolution that definitively dispels a dangerous, widespread myth: that we can command and control our world.
The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch—the endless fascination human beings have for design rather than evolution, for direction rather than emergence. Drawing on anecdotes from science, economics, history, politics and philosophy, Matt Ridley’s wide-ranging, highly opinionated opus demolishes conventional assumptions that major scientific and social imperatives are dictated by those on high, whether in government, business, academia,…
I am a feminist writer and sexologist. My recent book narrates my search for sexual empowerment and presents my vision for a world where no woman is objectified. I teach courses on topics including orgasms, neurodiversity, and childbirth. I also coach people on their sex and love lives, empowering them to take control over their relationships. I am now working on a new book that imparts my long and winding triumph over chronic illness and reveals that having a female body is not a curse but a blessing.
Female orgasms are not the mysteries society makes them out to be. This book illuminates how they work while debunking the prevalent, insidious myth that women's bodies are poorly designed.
It taught me about the evolutionary forces shaping our sexuality, the types of orgasms we can enjoy, and the frequently underestimated expansiveness of women's sexuality.
Researchers of human behaviour have identified an "orgasm gap": Men usually orgasm during intercourse, whereas women often do not. This book addresses this mystery. The two leading explanations are either that women are "psychologically broken" - Freud's theory - or badly designed - the "by-product theory." However, there is a much more compelling third explanation. Evolutionary biology, anatomy, physiology, and direct sex research suggest women have evolved under their own selection pressures and orgasm is a fitness-increasing consequence of such selective factors. This is revealed in their patterns of orgasmic response, which are neither random nor inexplicable.
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
Life really is stranger than fiction, and some of the stuff served up by evolution is outrageously bizarre. There are one-celled creatures that make rats want to cozy up to cats, a parasitic worm that turns snails into “disco zombies” and an ape that communicates across continents by pushing keys to create rows and columns of pixels. I’m fascinated by all of these creatures and love writing books for children about evolutionary biology, especially the evolution of intelligence. Besides authoring How to Build a Human, I’ve written about the evolution of intelligence in dolphins (The Dolphins of Shark Bay) and crows (Crow Smarts: Inside the Brain of the World’s Brightest Bird).
I’m usually underwhelmed by massively popular series books, which tend to “phone it in,” but this entry in the long-running Magic School Bus series impressed me. It kicks off with a student who wants to fill out his “family tree” and gets more than he bargained for, with a speedy dash through all the major stages of evolution as well as visits to a string of early human ancestors. The fantasy story frame will appeal to many children, while others will gravitate toward the jam-packed facts. There’s plenty of everything in this one for children aged 6 to 9.
When Arnold wishes he had more information for his family tree, Ms. Frizzle revs up the Magic School Bus and the class zooms back to prehistoric times. First stop: 3.5 billion years ago!
There aren't any people around to ask for directions. Luckily Ms. Frizzle has a plan, and the class is right there to watch simple cells become sponges and then fish and dinosaurs, then mammals and early primates and, eventually, modern humans. It's the longest class trip ever!
This is the story of a species, of our species, as only Ms.…
