From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2010:
(published October 5, 2010)

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat:
Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals by Hal Herzog
HarperCollins Publishers (10 East 53rd St., New York, NY 10022),
2010. 324 pages, hardcover. $24.99.

“When I first started studying human/animal interactions, I
was troubled by the flagrant moral incoherence I have described in
these pages,” concludes Western Carolina University psychology
professor Hal Herzog in Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat.
Examples include “vegetarians who sheepishly admitted to me they ate
meat; cockfighters who proclaimed their love for their roosters;
purebred dog enthusiasts whose desire to improve their breed has
created generations of genetically defective animals; hoarders who
caused untold suffering to the creatures living in filth they claim
to have rescued. I have come to believe that these sorts of
contradictions are not anomalies or hypocrisies,” Herzog states.
“Rather, they are inevitable.”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:

Naming Nature: The clash between instinct & science
by Carol Kaesuk Yoon
W.W. Norton & Co. (500 5th Ave., New York, NY 10110),
2009. 344 pages, hardcover. $27.95.

Taxonomy is the science of naming and cataloguing life forms.
What taxonomists do is order biological knowledge. The 18th century
botanist Carolus Linnaeus is widely recognized as the originator of
scientific taxonomy, but as Carol Kaesuk Yoon points out in Naming
Nature, Linnaeus’ contribution was chiefly that he found a means of
reconciling older taxonomic constructs to accommodate the findings of
the Age of Discovery.
Heraldic taxonomy, ranking species as “higher” and “lower”
according to recognized traits, had been recognized in various forms
throughout Europe, Asia, and much of Africa for thousands of years
before Linnaeus.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:

Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals
by Jonathan Balcombe
Palgrave MacMillan (175 5th Ave., New York, NY 10010),
2010. 242 pages, hardcover. $27.00.

Jonathan Balcombe, in Second Nature: The Inner Lives of
Animals, wrote the book that the long forgotten Royal Dixon tried to
write in The Human Side of Animals 90 years earlier.
Structurally, Second Nature and The Human Side of Animals are
so similar as to seem to have been written from the same outline.
This may be because any examination of animal sensitivity,
intelligence, emotions, awareness, communication, sociability,
and “virtue” might logically progress from looking at how animals
perceive the world and each other, to how they use their perceptions.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:

Made for Each Other:
The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond
by Meg Daley Olmert
Da Capo Press (11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142),
2010. 291 pages, paperback. $26.00.

Made for Each Other is densely packed with scientific facts
and theories about the biology of the animal-human bond. Hundreds of
citations back up or question the evolution of the human relationship
with species including dogs, baboons, and horses.
So many intricate details are thrown at the reader, however,
that the pacing is sluggish and the material is hard to digest all at
once. Chapter one, for example, discusses the work of nine
researchers, including E.O. Wilson, Elizabeth Lawrence, and Stephen
Kellert. Ensuing chapters follow a similar pattern, as Olmert
condenses lifetimes of study to make her points, centering on her
idea that there is an inherent chemical attraction among living
beings.

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