From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  July/August 2011:

Animal Rights:
What Everyone Needs to Know
by Paul Waldau
Oxford University Press
(198 Madison Ave.,  New York,  NY 10016),  2010.
224 pages,  paperback.  $16.95.

The Animal Rights Debate
by Gary L. Francione
& Robert Garner
Columbia University Press
(61 West 62nd St.,  New York,  NY  10023),  2010.
272 pages,  hardback,  $24.50.

My practice,  in reviewing works of philosophy,  is to save them for long flights to far-away places,  when I will have the rare luxury of being able to read for hours without interruption.  Then I write about what I remember well enough to be still thinking about it a week or two later. Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  July/August 2011:

Humane education classic:

Ordeal of the Animals
by Mel Morse
Prentice-Hall Inc.,  1968.
212 pages,  hardcover.

Wrote Humane Society of the U.S. senior policy advisor Bernard Unti to ANIMAL PEOPLE in June 2011,  “Mel Morse,  the HSUS president in the years 1968-1970,  wrote a book in 1968 entitled Ordeal of the Animals.  It is a nice period piece,”  Unti assessed, “a snapshot of how the landscape looked right about that time.  It was a composite work,”  Unti said,  “drawing on material drafted by core staff members like Patrick Parkes,”  who were not credited. Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  July/August 2011:

 

Unlikely Friendships
by Jennifer S. Holland

Workman Publishing
(225 Varick St.,  9th floor,  New York,  NY 10014),  2011.
210 pages,  paperback.  $13.95.

Exceptional color pictures of animals posing together sell Unlikely Friendships.  The individual stories are even more captivating.  One of the best known involves Koko,  who was taught American Sign Language by Gorilla Foundation founder Penny Patterson. For years Patterson also read stories about cats and kittens to Koko. Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2011:
Suryia & Roscoe:
The true story of an unlikely friendship
by Bhagavan “Doc” Antle & Thea Feldman
Henry Holt & Company, Inc. (175 Fifth Ave., New York,
NY 10010), 2011. 32 pages, hardcover, illustrated. $16.99.
The color picture on page one of Suryia & Roscoe sold me on
this children’s book before I read a single word of the text. The
image of a smiling orangutan, Suryia, with hairy arms draped around
a dog named Roscoe, is priceless. According to the story, narrated
by South Carolina wildlife exhibitor Bhagavan Antle and Thea Feldman,
an author of numerous children’s picture books, Roscoe wandered into
Antle’s premises where Suryia was riding Bubbles the elephant.

Read more