Category: Reviews

REVIEWS: Snowy Egret

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

Snowy Egret
Spring/Autumn 1995, Spring 1996
$12/year, POB 9, Bowling Green, IN 47833

Still a quiet good read for naturelovers,
after 74 years, and one of the bestkept
secrets in nature writing, the single
1995 edition of Snowy Egret features
Arkansas sheep rancher Jayn Steidl
Thibodeau on learning to appreciate and live
with coyotes. In Spring 1996, Bill Embly
observes a doomed drone bee’s will to live,
while poet James Magorian asks, “What failures,
unhealings, great emptiness / of heart
would bring a person / into this bright land to
shoot animals?” Both editions are illustrated
with linocuts, wood engravings, and lithographs
by Ladislav Hanka.

BOOKS: Track of the Coyote

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

Track of the Coyote
by Todd Wilkinson
with photos by Michael H. Francis
NorthWord Press Inc.
(POB 1360, Minocqua, WI 54548),
1995. 140 pages; $14.95, paperback.

The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Hour
gets just one thing about coyotes right: someone
is always gunning for them. Todd
Wilkinson’s Track of the Coyote draws heavily
upon biologist Robert Crabtree’s recent
five-year study of the coyotes of the Lamar
Valley in Yellowstone National Park, now
extirpated by the reintroduction of wolves.

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BOOKS: China’s Threatened Wildlife

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

China’s Threatened Wildlife
by Liz and Keith Laidler
Blandford, distributed by Sterling
Publishing (387 Park Avenue South,
New York, NY 10016-8810),
192 pages, 50 color illustrations, $24.95.

Most of us are semi-familiar with the
giant panda, perhaps the red panda, the
Yangtse dolphin, Chinese alligator, and Pere
David’s deer, but these are just a handful of
the unique, little-known, fast-vanishing wild
inhabitants of the most populous and longest
settled nation on earth, which nonetheless has
surprisingly many corners seldom explored or
exploited––until now, when increasing affulence
has in turn stimulated demand for costly
folk medicines whose ingredients are valued to
the degree that they are scarce, and are scarce
to the degree that the species from which they
come are endangered.

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REVIEWS: Pet Food

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Pet Food
Investigative report by the Animal
Protection Institute of America,
free from API (916-731-5521 or
POB 22505, Sacramento, CA 95822).
16 pages, 1996.

The Animal Protection Institute
holds that the $9-billion-a-year pet food
industry is committing legal consumer fraud.
“Regulation of the production of pet food is
almost nonexistent,” API charges, calling
“for new state and federal regulations that set
standards similar to those of foods for
humans, truthful labeling of pet food ingredients,
and prosecution of pet food companies
who falsely advertise the health benefits of
their product.”
The API view may be debated––but
even if commercial pet food is generally good
for pets, opposite to the API contention, it’s
hard to argue against more accountability.

BOOKS: Making A Killing: An End-Of-The-World Black Comedy

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Making A Killing: An End-Of-The-World Black Comedy
by William M. Johnson.
The Book Club Guild (25 High Street, Lewes, Sussex, U.K.); 1996.
382 pages, 15 pounds. (U.S. price not yet announced.)

The world’s high muckety-mucks—thinly
disguised caricatures of Ronald Reagan, the
Pope, the British royal family, and various
minions—hold a summit on strategy to save
the world, in politically troubled but picturesque
Caribbean San Pimente.
Through a series of painfully protracted
scenarios, we are informed that the game plan
is sustainable exploitation: conserve the plants
and animals that humans find economically
useful, and let “nature take its course” with
the rest, even if it means extinction. The more
monetarily useful plants and animals will be
“made to pay their own way,” as profits from
their harvest and use go toward sustaining
them, and of course to genetically designing
better and more productive breeds.

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BOOKS: American Nature Writing 1996 & The Soul of Nature

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

American Nature Writing 1996
selected by John A. Murray.
Sierra Club Books (730 Polk St., San Francisco, CA 94109), 1996.
300 pages. $15.00 paperback.

The Soul of Nature: Celebrating the Spirit of the Earth
edited by Michael Tobias and Georgianne Cowan.
Penguin Books (375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014), 1996.
298 pages. $11.95 paperback.

A collection of 29 short features,
including a few poems, American Nature
Writing celebrates “the best American nature
writing” of the year. Contributors to this edition
include Jimmy Carter, E.O. Wilson,
Jennifer Ackerman, Frank Stewart, and Barry
Lopez, but the reputations of the authors
exceed the quality of the content. More sentimental
than either passionate or insightful,
American Nature Writing reads rather like a
Reader’s Digest anthology—condensed,
somewhat chirpy, a little bland.

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BOOKS: Counting on Calico and Calico Picks A Puppy

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Counting on Calico and Calico Picks A Puppy
both by Phyllis Limbacher Tildes
Charlesbridge Publishing (85 Main Street, Watertown, MA 02172-4411),
1995, 1996. $6.95 each, oversized paperback.

Children love Counting on Calico
and Calico Picks A Puppy, from the introduction
of Calico the Cat by “Squeaker of
the House” Willy Whiskers to the very last
drawing in the brightly illustrated set, showing
cat and dog together. Though these
books have a rudimentary plot, and are
drawn as richly as any story-book, they are
in fact manuals on cat and dog basics, the
things every child should know before getting
a pet. The information is accurate; the
format and scale of the art are conducive to
group read-alouds. Humane educators will
particularly appreciate that after admiring
various purebreds, Calico finally settles on
a mixed-breed puppy, noting that mongrels
often combine the best traits of both parents.

BOOKS: Eat Right, Live Longer

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

Eat Right, Live Longer:
Using the Natural Power of Foods to Age-Proof Your Body
by Neal Barnard, M.D.; recipes and menus by Jennifer Raymond, M.S.
Harmony Books (201 East 50th St., New York, NY 10022)
1995, 388 pages, $24.00, hardcover.

Neal Barnard has written yet another
book connecting diet and health, drawing an
analogy between Renaissance Art and the
human body: it is not time but lack of care that
can prematurely destroy the two. Like the art
he references, Dr. Barnard’s work seems to
get better with age.

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