What I'm reading

"Bird-keeping and Birdcages: A History" Sonia Roberts

A quaint little book, “Bird-keeping and Birdcages: A History” was published in 1972, and is probably more interesting for its black and white illustrations and photos than for its historical research. Excluding the first chapter which deals with “The Ancient World” and travels from biblical times to the medieval age in about five pages and the second “Renaissance Exoticism and After” which has some titbit information on western European countries, Sonia Roberts' book mainly deals with British history and the rise of its bird fancy - and is more assured of its facts when it does so -, especially concerning small species such as canaries and, later, budgies.The rest of the world and its “simple societies” are taken care of with a mention on the first page.



However, this book provides a series of interesting vignettes on bird-keeping from Ancient Egypt to our days and is the only book I know of that also addresses the evolution of bird-cages and aviaries and understands that they can be important cultural and artistic objects on their own.



I do wish someone would write a revised and updated version of this History, taking into account archaeological and documentary evidence from the last forty years. After all, I feel Roberts makes an interesting point when she states: “it is reasonable to claim that caged birds were man’s first true pets, for although the dog and cat predate the cage bird as companions of man, they were originally co-opted as assistants in hunting and vermin control respectively”.
Are you there Tim Birkhead, Marina Belozerskaya and Louise Robbins?

"The Story of Sushi" - Trevor Corson

The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice

Tell you what: I don’t know when I’ll be eating sushi again. No, I didn’t learn anything disgusting about it while reading Trevor Corson’s “The Story of Sushi” – except maybe the correct way to prepare an octopus, which seemed unnecessarily cruel. It’s more like I learned everything I wanted to know about sushi (and then some) and now feel no need for it. This book must be what they call “definitive” because I certainly have trouble imagining why I would read about sushi ever again. In a roundabout way, this is actually a compliment.

“The Story of Sushi” not only delves extensively on the historical birth and evolution of what we came to know as sushi, it also follows a sushi chef class in a Californian school/sushi bar. Additionally, it also tells the tale of how this Japanese dish conquered America and the rest of the Western World.

In the last five years sushi bars have made the step from ubiquitous to ridiculous – there is nary a place where sushi is unavailable and mind you I’m not in New York or anything and I’m in walking distance of at least four sushi restaurants. It is so readily available it is almost impossible to believe that not that many years ago it was kind of weird to eat raw fish.

By focusing on a young girl attending the sushi academy, Corson, cleverly chooses a character most of us can empathize with: someone with no ties to Asian culture, someone who didn't grow up in this tradition (or in any cooking tradition, for that matter), she could be any one of us, someone who likes sushi because it tastes fresh and clean yet feels exotic, but has no idea of the difficult preparation process of those cute nigiri or rolls. Alongside Kate we witness how frustrating it is to master so many techniques and information in so little time (traditional sushi apprenticeship went on for years, before students could do more than prepare the rice).

Because Corson is interested in marine biology, there is also a lot of information on the different fish that were traditionally used in sushi and how their popularity has changed over time. It will probably not be surprising to find out that fish (such as salmon) and rolls favored in America are not that popular in Japan.

More surprising to the reader will be the fact that sushi bar culture in Japan, has always been, and to some degree still is, a guy thing. Single women were not welcomed in these establishments and female sushi chefs unheard of. Men come in, sit at the bar, drink sake and eat some nigiri. How ironic is it that sushi bars are now one of the preferred spots for city girls to grab a bite?

If there is something about sushi that has your curiosity piqued then the answer will be here. Corson even provides the reader with a sushi etiquette-guide-to-not-looking-like-a-total-redneck-at-the-sushi-bar (my words, not the author’s). While it is very interesting I think sushi bars will definitely be different in America and Europe than what they are in Japan (for one, women are welcome) and that their continuing popularity will definitely be tied with how comfortable people feel there. While Japan is a nation where ritual plays an important part even in seemingly innocuous tasks, westerners privilege feeling at ease even while striving to be original.

It will be interesting to see what happens to sushi in the next twenty, thirty years. Already, most sushi chefs aren’t Japanese, and most restaurant owners know little about its history except that sushi is it, right now. Will it go the way of Chinese food or follow some original path (maybe everyone will start doing rolls at home)? In either case “The Story of Sushi” is the definitive book on this not-so-exotic-anymore treat for the foreseeable future.

"The Fortune Cookie Chronicles" - Jennifer 8. Lee

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food

For non-American readers the revelations in “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles” will probably come as less of a shock, since, for most Europeans (the uber-sophisticaded world travellers excluded) the first image of Chinese food (and more recently sushi) probably came from watching a random American TV show or movie.

As I followed Jennifer 8. Lee’s delicious chronicles I wasn’t particularly astounded to find out that, in China, fortune cookies (which by the way, are very uncommon in Europe) are not known, and that the most popular Chinese food dishes in America, such as General Tso’s Chicken, Beef and Broccoli and Chow Mein, were creations of Chinese chefs specifically engineered to suit the American palate, favorite ingredients and presentation.

I was surprised however, to find out that fried ice-cream – one of the most popular Chinese desserts in Portugal – was only found by the author in Italy. In fact, as Lee explains, traditional Chinese gastronomy is not known for its sweets. But the Chinese, brilliant at meeting the culinary expectations of different cultures, must have soon found out that, especially in southern Europe, dessert is almost mandatory!

Growing up, I always heard that food in China had almost no similarities with what I ate in Chinese restaurants (something I only started doing quite late, since my family wasn’t big on restaurants or ethnic food – unless you count my mom’s homemade lasagna or pizza), but it’s still fascinating to follow Lee’s explorations in search of the roots of the “Chinese” in Chinese-American food.

But “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles” also offers interesting sociological stories courtesy of Chinese food, such as the age-old relationship between American Jews and Chinese restaurants, the emergence of the first home-delivery systems, and the sad plight of contemporary Chinese immigrants. Impossible not be shocked at the amount most Chinese pay (upwards 50.000 thousand dollars) in order to endure months, sometimes years, of grueling travel so they can be afforded the privilege of ringing our western doorbells and hand us our sweet-and-sour pork.

So, where did the fortune cookie originate? Well, you can find out that fun fact by popping over to Wikipedia right now. But Lee’s book gives the reader a lot more to ponder: even in small western capitals such as Lisbon, eating the ethnic food du jour (nowadays, mostly sushi, to the point that Chinese restaurants seem to have disappeared or recast as nippon counterparts) is the mark of a certain urbanite hipsterism - it signals sophistication and a sense of adventure. Like our cheap t-shirts, however, there is always a hidden cost, and finally what we end up eating is not as original as we might like to think – “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles” will provide any reader with food for thought.

"Leviathan or, The Whale" - Philip Hoare

“Leviathan” is a whale of a book. Ah. Obvious I know, but it is four hundred something pages long. Impossible not to think Philip Hoare was going for some sort of “whose is longest” contest with the mythical whale book “Moby-Dick”. Unfortunately, length does not equal reading pleasure and Leviathan proved to be a somewhat frustrating experience.

Whales might be the closest thing to aliens living right here on Earth. Their sheer size makes them incomprehensible. Their longevity doesn’t much help either. Their mysterious communications skills hint at a complex mind, wholly foreign to our terrestrial understanding. Not only do they move through a fantastic realm of deep waters but they also cover amazing distances, yet they surface, to breathe through lungs and share our mammalian heritage.

“Leviathan” started on a promising note of personal narrative. However it soon lost me in subsequent chapters. Halfway through I was close to giving up on the book, but decided to read the last two chapters where the author goes to the Portuguese islands of the Azores to track its whaling history and provide closure to his fear of deep waters by swimming with whales. I was hooked again. This is what it’s about. This was what the book should have been about all along: the fear and fascination these giants elicit.

I went back and found the second half of the book much more pleasant, now focused in British whaling history, Antarctic exploration, the shift from the economical to the scientific exploration of whales, the first efforts to protect them and the politic and economic factors that combined to hinder it.

So, what was it about the first half of the book that made me dislike it? In two words: Herman Melville. It felt like Hoare was paralysed by the spectrum of “Moby-Dick” and its author, constantly compelled to refer back to it and dwelling altogether too much in Melville’s biography. As the author himself explains, “Moby Dick” might be about a whale but it’s about a lot of other things – chiefly about writing a great masterpiece capable of paying homage to the pessimistic worldview of Nathaniel Hawthorne with whom Melville became supremely infatuated.

Plainly put, to start a contemporary book on whales taking Melville as a guide felt unoriginal. The chapters where the author tours ancient whaling ports of New England felt dead on the water, and taking into mind that later in the book Hoare goes back to the history of whaling at a much earlier date (in Europe) it felt like the chronology was wrong. Why start in the middle?

The other problem I had with “Leviathan” is that there is too much of it. Look, you know that scene in “Wonderboys” where the Katie Holmes’s character has just read Professor Tripp’s mammoth of a book and says “I could be wrong, but it sort of reads in places like you didn't make any choices. At all.” Not that I’m saying Philip Hoare wrote this “under the influence” but I could hear the book crying for an iron-fisted editor. There are so many little pieces of information and little conducting line to guide the reader along – it’s more like fighting against drowning at times. For instance, Percy Stammwitz, a character deserving of his own biography, appears in chapter III, as the author makes an historical detour of a few pages through the building of the huge whale model in London’s Natural History Museum. How I’m I supposed to remember him two hundred pages and some hundreds of different historical episodes, characters and facts later, as the author picks up his story again, now to follow his travels as he collected specimens worldwide for the museum?

There is an large interlude about Henry David Thoreau, in which his interest in whales is chronicled, the point of which is a connection between the beach he once walked and whale fossils discovered in the same place, seemingly an introduction to the palaeontology of whales, but actually not, because the author only spends a few paragraphs on the subject before going on to the next thing: myths of sea serpents. Do you get the picture? Ok, if you look hard enough there are references to whales everywhere (but you don’t need to cram every single one in the book, dude). We get it; but to say “Walden” is “a corollary to Moby-Dick” stinks of trying too hard to prove a point.

It almost feels as though there are several books here, all jumbled up. One about the history of commercial whaling, another about the whale as object of scientific study and later, conservation icon and a final one about the natural history of the animal, strictly speaking (which is definitely the shorter part). Now, all of these might be combined of course, but in Leviathan somehow it didn’t really come together. And to top it all, there is the personal narrative of the author, which starts the book in such an auspicious note but, somewhat like a whale, surfaces seldom and then erupts, unexpectedly into a two page detailed account of the author’s mother’s death. I felt embarrassed to, without warning, be plunged into a deeply intimate moment. I can’t imagine why Hoare felt it belonged in these pages.

To be fair, from chapter IX onwards I did feel a renewed cohesion in the book (but maybe influenced by the fact that I had read the final chapters first). In the end there was a lot of interesting bits of information but the reading of “Leviathan” was more of a trial than anything else. I wouldn’t say she blows (get it? hilarious) but either you’re completely nuts about whaling or you should probably sit this one out.

Three Books on Tortoises

Timothy; or; Notes of an Abject Reptile: a novel – Verlyn Klinkenborg
Lonesome George: The Life and Times of a Conservation Icon – Henry Nichols
Timothy the Tortoise: The Remarkable Story of the Nation’s Oldest Pet

It all started with Klinkenborg’s book: I must have bought it some two years back and started reading it some five times. Each time I gave up in the very first pages. Then one day I started it and read the whole thing. Oh, it’s a difficult book all right. It doesn’t give you an inch. You have to pry it open, re-read passages constantly, use the glossary (which I only noticed was there half-way through) and even gasp! use the dictionary, only to not find what you were looking for.

But, it’s a beautiful book. Ethereal, a philosophical dissertation, a study of Man and its incomprehensible ways by an animal considered by most unthinking, slow, stupid.

Our guide is a tortoise named Timothy, an actual, historical character (his shell is kept in London’s Natural History Museum). Gilbert White, British naturalist of the XVIII Century famous for his “The Natural History of Selborne” in which he chronicles the natural cycles of his home county, adopted the Greek tortoise Timothy after his owner passed away. A man so in tune with every bird migration and sprouting bud, seems to have been less loving and observant of his unusual pet - his is the expression “abject reptile”.

Here, however, Klinkenborg decides to give voice to Timothy and allow him to write his own “Natural History of Selbourne”. More an anthropologist than a natural historian, for he is a foreigner and both weather and custom feel out of place to him. Well, actually, more of an alien creature, for he is condemned to a life a solitude without ever meeting one of his kind. Condemned also, because of his longevity, to witness death often.

For Timothy the frailty of human skin which must be clothed and then housed is a source of wonder, maybe even some scorn: we are beings naturally unfit to live in Nature and must make up for it by our wits: “No creature excels the human in matters of nidification”.

“Notes…” is a very rewarding book, but I think you have to be in the right mood to enjoy it. It is very contemplative in tone with a lot of XVIII century rural vocabulary, and I believe most readers will probably have to make an initial effort to pierce its outer carapace. However, inside lies a very wise, friendly beast whose company will almost certainly improve our condition.

“Lonesome George” is the kind of book I love. Centered in the creature that has been labeled “the rarest animal in the world” it digresses into conservation, cloning, the politics of tourism vs conservation vs local economy and of course, Darwin, for George lives in the Galápagos Islands.

He is the last known Geochelone nigra abingdoni or Pinta Island Tortoise, first discovered in 1971, and the book traces both efforts to find out for sure if George really is lonesome, (he may not be) as well as various strategies to attempt procreation (with turtles of nearby islands of similar genetic make-up) which have not yielded results until now.

How did turtles even get to the Galápagos? And why are there so many different species? Did they arrive at different times or spread later through the islands? How has human hand influenced the distribution and extermination of turtles in the islands? Can individual animals like Lonesome George really make a difference in conservation efforts by influencing public opinion? What are some near-extinct species that have come back from the brink of annihilation and what were the techniques used by scientists to accomplish this? And can havens of biodiversity like the Galápagos really find balance between being scientific stations for (mostly) foreign scientists, tourist destinations for (let’s face it) the wealthy and a place where economic survival is possible for native inhabitants?

These are some of the questions Henry Nicholls explores and really, how can you not be interested in finding out the answers?

I got “Timothy the Tortoise” because it was cheap and well, I was in a tortoise kind of place. While it doesn’t really focus solely on its protagonist, I did find the book an enjoyable read. Timothy (so named after Gilbert White’s Timothy) serves as the guide to the British aristocratic Courtenay family as the author follows the genealogical tree using Timothy’s keeper’s and recounts of important family events and memories of the tortoise.

Because it actually chronicles an epoch when British aristocracy and its way of life became redundant I found it quite interesting, though really, there isn’t much turtle lore here.

On a quirky end note, both Timothy’s were actually found out to be females…

"Shrinking the Cat" - Sue Hubbell

“Shrinking the Cat: Genetic Engineering Before We Knew About Genes” is a great little book that attempts to address cultural hysteria about genetic manipulation by means of a very interesting history lesson.

Taking four specific examples of plant and animal species (or strains or breeds) that have been created by humans – meaning selectively bred to achieve certain desirable qualities such as colour, taste, quantity – Sue Hubbell makes her case that humans are born “tinkerers”. Long before we knew, or could imagine, the mechanisms involved, we were already changing our reality: choosing certain species and destroying others, “improving” and nurturing crops and animals that were useful or struck our fancy, often altering them so radically that, after centuries (or millennia) of human interference there is sometimes little resemblance between human manipulated species and their wild progenitors.

(As a side reference, I learned in the “Guinea Pig Handbook” that cavies had been domesticated some three thousand years prior to the arrival of Europeans in America – they diverged so much from their wild “cousins” through artificial selection that, to this day, scientists have been unable to definitely pinpoint the cavy’s wild progenitor – it is believed that it probably went extinct.)

Taking the specific examples of corn, silkworms, cats and apples – all of them continually altered by humans – Hubbell always asks in each particular tale of genetic manipulation (for that is undoubtedly what happened): “If little green men were to swoop down and kidnap all of humanity in their spaceships [would] our descendants – brought back to the planet after five thousand years of good behaviour (…) find”…corn, apples, silkworms and cats as we know them?

The answer is definitely not – for we have created them and they depend on us to propagate and reproduce. Corn, for instance, and silkworms, have been altered to the point that they would not be able to reproduce without human assistance (neither would enormous cows and pigs which are now routinely artificially inseminated – and French bulldogs that cannot deliver the big-headed puppies without c-sections).

Cats are, of course, survivors, and would probably still be around. Of course no snub nosed Persians or hairless Sphinxes would last for long without human protection. Cat colour would probably be less diverse and exotic, too. One of the most fascinating passages connects coloru and pattern propagation with human commercial routes, referring to an academic study which found increased numbers of orange cats in cities with large ports and along rivers with increased commercial activity.

Apple trees are hardy plants, native to central Asia. They are naturally so diverse in colour, texture and flavour (with a majority of not very tasty ones) that it almost seems a crime we have reduced the species to the bland, gigantic red ones. Did you know there are apples that are naturally white? Most wild apples are small and gnarled and once in a while there is one that produces incredible fruits.

This is what we do: we create conformity in some species, incentivize diversity in other. We created tens of cat breeds, but are hard pressed to find an exciting apple in the market. We like to change things, see what happens when we cross different breeds, take them out of their place and grow them elsewhere, propagate something just because we like its colour or because it gives more fruit.

If there is one decidedly human characteristic, Hubbell argues, is that we like to change things around us, mix it up just to see what happens. And it’s nothing new either – with whatever crude tools and little knowledge it possessed, mankind has been doing it, it seems, forever.

We now can reach “inside” species and alter them directly in their matrix – but it’s not that surprising. “Shrinking the Cat” shows that we’ve been dreaming of this almost since we first opened our eyes and looked around.

Mary Elizabeth Thurston "The Lost History of the Canine Race"

“The Lost History of the Canine Race: Our 15,000-Year Love Affair with Dogs” is a must-read for every dog lover. But anyone interested in knowing more about our complex historical relation with the creature that, for good and bad, has been our closest companion will find a lot of information in this book.

This large volume is put together like the reference book it deserves to be. It is filled with information and illustrated throughout with black and white photographs and also has a section of colour reproductions. It’s the kind of book you keep going back to, in order to check a fact, re-read a passage, or just look at the pictures.

Mary Elizabeth Thurston starts at the very beginning taking a look at currently held theories on the domestication of the wolf (Asia, is now the believed spot for the first domestication, and all dogs are supposedly descended from only a few domesticated individuals). She then takes a look at archaeological finds to see what they reveal (or not) about mankind’s growing proximity with the dog. Interestingly enough, European cave painting so lavish in portraying prey animals hardly ever features dogs, who were by then almost certainly a feature of human groups.

The author then provides fascinating and learned essays on the place of dogs in Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations, drawing from archaeological finds, art, texts and religion. She also explains that, only recently, has zooarchaeology been gaining acceptance in museums and universities. For most of the twentieth century archaeological finds pertaining to animals were regularly discarded by archaeologists themselves as well as museums – dog and cat remains along with objects related to their keeping were not seen as important. Animal mummies (and animal cemeteries) for instance, were so numerous in Egypt that they were routinely destroyed or sold as curios. Unimaginable amounts of information were lost in this way and by the discarding of animal bones found in Neolithic and Palaeolithic digs.

Following chapters analyse dog culture in Medieval and Renaissance epochs. Some very interesting sub-chapters deal with the use of dogs as weapons of terror by the Spanish Conquistadores in their colonies, the belief in supernatural dogs (the Inquisition popularizing the relationship between black dogs and the Devil) but also favoured royal pets in European courts.

The object of royal indulgence, dogs became the status symbol for anyone who could afford them. Ironically, as populations became increasingly urban, the dog, so often maligned as the carrier of disease and bad spirits, endured only as a fearless, tireless and uncomplaining guardian of flocks, property and hunting companion, slowly turned into the loved pet we know today.

It was in this context that “the fancy” was born. Breeders, shows and clubs were mostly the product of the XIX century and it is surely not a coincidence that DNA testing has proved that the majority of dog breeds were “born” around this time by extensive artificial selection at the hands of humans. In this period breeders began to enhance certain physical traits and not always with a goal other than esthetical preference and the belief that a “purebred” dog (in other words a dog created by human intervention) is superior to a “random-bred” dog (a mutt, by other words).

It is fascinating to think that our “modern” relationship with dogs is, in fact, so recent! Of course, as soon as dogs became pets, “rare” and “exotic” breeds become the holy grail of cosmopolitan trendsetters. One of the first dog “fevers” was caused by the tiny Pekingese. Probably descended from the Roman Era Maltese, only the royal Chinese family was allowed to own and breed them. And breed they did, creating (mostly in the late XIX century) the short-legged, pug-nosed, hairball we know today (western breeders would further “improve” the breed within an inch of its life). When British and French troops stormed the Summer Palace in 1860 during the Opium Wars, they came upon these little “freaks”, who could have easily slipped into oblivion, where it not the fact that a British ship captain offered one to Queen Victoria. The Peke had been made. In fact, modern Pekes are descended from these Chinese refugees (just as modern Shar-Pei persecuted by the Communist regime were also “saved” by westerners), a couple of males and a hand-full of females.

The first societies for the protection of animals, the use of dogs in wars, the place of the dog in Native American culture, the rise of modern dog breeds, dog laws, commercial dog food and accessories and dog cemeteries are all tackled in this volume. It overflows information, all of it fascinating for dog people and at 300 pages it made wish it was double the size. An absolute treat.

Ann Moyal "Platypus"

Ann Moyal’s “Platypus: The Extraordinary Story of How A Curious Creature Baffled the World” is a book in search of a protagonist. Why that is, is unclear for certainly this oddest of beasts has an inbred star quality, or so it would seem.

Yet the book lacks a center, a thread, instead following the complicated historical flow of platypus scientific discussion – a complicated ping-pong of (mis)communication between (mostly) amateur scientists in its Australian native land and (mostly creationist) scientists in Europe.

The first platypus pelt reached the West in the late XVIII century and threw naturalists into a frenzy. So bizarre was this duck bill tucked into a small brown and furry body, with a fat sheep’s tail and webbed feet, that some British scientists are reported to have looked for stitch marks. It seemed like an elaborate hoax.

The small platypus got caught up into a scientific discussion that went largely beyond its own strange attributes: did it lay eggs or give birth to live young? Was it a marine mammal, a fury reptile or a missing link between birds and alligators? These were questions that, due to the distances involved, the difficulty in preserving live animals (or even dead ones), the hiatus between letters and the generally discreet habits of the platypus would take many years to answer.

But there was a more explosive argument going on. One that asked the loaded question: “do species evolve?”. The Platypus got pushed into taxonomic categories where it might best serve the underlying ideology of the leading scientists of the day, even when it was clearly a round peg in a square hole.

Moyal faithfully traces the history of platypus correspondence and theorizing while making a great job of explaining the leading scientific trends of the day and the main scientist’s curricula. But I often felt I was losing sight of what really interested me - the platypus and its native habitat - and being pulled instead through a series of smoky salons where the dried specimens were hardly a match for the huge egos in the room.

The Darwin chapter in particular seemed unnecessarily long, since he had little to say about the creature, though Moyal suggests the platypus might have had some influence on his theories.

All in all “Platypus” is an interesting natural history book, though probably not for everyone. The author obviously sifted through an impressive amount of historical data and I suspect it might have bogged her down. For my taste the book is a little too heavy on documental minutia (a lot of which I had already come across in more generic books on Darwinism and precedent scientific theories) – and in the end, seems to lack sheer passion for the fantastic creature whose story it tells.

Vicki Croke "The Lady And The Panda"

Ruth Harkness and Su-Lin

Being cute blows. Pandas know this. They might be predators who weigh up to 150kg and can cause some serious pain when annoyed (“A man has been attacked by a panda at a park in southern China, after he climbed into its enclosure hoping to cuddle the creature.” – “Teenager Hospitalized After Panda Attack at Chinese Zoo” – “Giant panda in China bites third victim”) but somehow it never quite registered with humans “I always thought they were cute and just ate bamboo” said victim of third attack. Well, now.

See, pandas decided to go veggie somewhere along their evolutionary path. Because the mainstay of their diet, bamboo, provides so little energy, they are forced to spend much of their time munching just to keep the sugar levels up. When they move it’s mostly slowly. But apparently, some part of their brains and bodies still know they are bears.

To humans though, they are first plush toys and second cute animals. Few other wild animals have been the source of such prolonged infatuation (dolphins come to mind, and by the way they can get mean too). Scientists point to the big round faces, roly-poly bodies, the appearance of big eyes caused by the black spots, and the fact that pandas sit in an almost human manner to eat and feed their young as irresistible to our species. They are soft, fluffy and their color looks artificial and modern, dreamed up by an avant-garde toy inventor, certainly not threatening like leopard spots or tiger stripes.
Ever since a panda pelt was brought to the west by a French missionary in 1869, we have been panda-crazy. Curiously enough the sons of American President Theodore Roosevelt (whose ordering of a “mercy” killing of a wounded bear inspired first a political cartoon and then the birth of the modern toy, the teddy bear) Theo Jr and Kermit were the first westerners to shoot a panda (Alanis me this).

Vicki Croke’s “The Lady And The Panda” certainly provides food for thought but is primarily the story of Ruth Harkness (whose account of her panda adventure was published under the same name in 1938. Married to adventurer and heir (as adventurers are advised to be) Bill Harkness, Ruth enjoyed the sort of “Thin Man” movies Manhattan night style: a dress designer that could down martinis and scotch with the best of them while husband sailed the world in search of natural treasures.

After being gone for two years on an expedition to bring pandas back to the west (an expedition that never left Shanghai) Bill Harkness died of cancer in China. Ruth was distraught but undaunted: after all she had always dreamed of accompanying Bill in his expeditions but had always been discouraged by his male associates. She would go to China and bring back a live panda to the United States.

It helped that her home-base in China, Shanghai, was in the early thirties even more cosmopolitan than New York. People from all nationalities crossed their paths in the city: there was sophistication and jazz in the luxury western hotels and exoticism in the Chinese side. Harkness soon fell in love with Chinese people and their culture, while developing a healthy disdain for westerners ill-concealed racism.

Being a charming young woman helped her circumvent the bureaucratic pits which had detained her husband. But Harkness was more than an elegant creature – she had a knack for assessing character and soon was convinced that Bill’s associate Floyd Smith was an incompetent moocher, and sent him packing, inadvertently setting in motion a lifetime of hatred and jealousy (on account of which not a few pandas died untimely deaths at Smith’s hands).

Against all odds Harkness kept the pace, travelling to inner China, near the border of Tibet, trekking in arduous terrain and sleeping in an abandoned lamasery. A fantastic intuition told her to pack a baby bottle with her expedition material and soon enough a baby panda just about fell into her lap. Harkness felt blessed and treated little Su-Lin with a mother’s attention: always carrying her around, trying different foods. She couldn’t help but feel, despite all the discomfort she surely endured that this was a magical land, for she loved the landscape, the people, the baby panda and her expedition organizer, a young and handsome Chinese-American named Quentin Young.

After much bureaucratic wrangling, Harkness arrived in the United States with Su-Lin and received a hero’s welcome. Harkness and baby were the celebrities of the day. After negotiations with the Bronx Zoo stalled, it was Chicago’s Brookfield who won the honor (and the long waiting lines) of first presenting a live panda to the American audiences (and here is the origin of the phenomena which still, today, leads American Zoos into leasing pandas for astronomical amounts from the Chinese government).

Harkness wanted twenty thousand dollars to immediately launch a new campaign into the Chinese interior, and bring back a male panda (although a male panda is what she had brought unbeknownst to her and zoo staff). Although the zoo gave her less for her troubles, it was still an astronomical amount for that period, and instigated a few other expeditions including Floyd Smith’s.

But from here on it was mostly downhill for Harkness – she tried to recapture the happiness of that first expedition but personal and world events seem to conspire against her. Young was now married and things were awkward between them to say the least. A male panda was captured and Harkness, used to baby Su-Lin (who was still able to scratch and bite quite forcefully) was shocked at the wildness of this panda.

The male panda actually died from illness or internal injuries caused by his capture. Harkness and the press would never mention him again. They didn’t need to. In a last stroke of luck she came about a new baby panda (also a male that, like Su-Lin would be erroneously labeled a female). Harkness managed to get out of China just as the Japanese invasion was getting started.

Harkness with Su-Lin and Mei-Mei

Her third and last expedition into China would find Harkness braving a war torn country and going into the terrain with only Chang, her cook of previous journeys at her side. She would also do something unprecedented for an explorer, certainly a male one: she would double back into the wild, to release the female panda her hunters had captured.

By this time Harkness was well aware of the panda persecution and killing going on, mostly by, or at the instigation of, westerners eager to get their hands on this most valuable of trophies. This last panda was reckless, forever wanting to scale walls, trees and generally get into trouble. Harkness saw in the animal a desire for her predestined life, her wild life.

Ruth Harkness would never go back to China, although she would try for quite some time. But by then World War II was in progress. She fell deeper and deeper into alcoholism, drinking herself to sleep most nights. What was she seeking oblivion from? From constantly missing her husband? China? Unrequited love for Young? From the panda eyes behind Zoo bars or the ones that had died in her care (a second one had to be shot after going berserk in captivity, still in China)? Maybe all of it.

The dress designer turned explorer who had travelled to some of the more inhospitable regions on earth, endured conditions most men could not and returned home with the catch of the century, was unable to keep herself financially afloat, or sober. She dallied in this and that, travelled to South America, wrote for Gourmet Magazine.

In 1947 she was found dead in a hotel room in Pittsburgh.

Today, four American, three European, one Mexican and one Australian zoos have pandas. The rest are in China and Asian neighboring countries. They are incredibly expensive to lease and their conservation in the wild is proving to be multi-billion dollar endeavor. Last year a British naturalist led to some conservationists into hysterics when he suggested funds ought to be reassigned from panda conservation to habitat conservation (Americans, with their need to cause trouble came up with the headline “Wild Life Expert Says Let the Pandas Die” – yikes…). In fact his article published in the Guardian makes a lot of valid points:

“Extinction is very much a part of life on earth. And we are going to have to get used to it in the next few years because climate change is going to result in all sorts of disappearances. The last large mammal extinction was another animal in China – the Yangtze river dolphin, which looked like a worn-out piece of pink soap with piggy eyes and was never going to make it on to anyone's T-shirt. If that had appeared beautiful to us, then I doubt very much that it would be extinct. But it vanished, because it was pig-ugly and swam around in a river where no one saw it. And now, sadly, it has gone for ever.”

Summer Red Reading

A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage and the Quest for the Colour of Desire - Amy Butler Greenfield

Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale - Catherine Orenstein

The Red Canary: The Story of the First Genetically Engineered Animal - Tim Birkhead

believe me when I tell you these are great...

...but I'm not in a reviewing mood - it's too hot

Golden Boy - A Hong Kong Childhood
Martin Booth
I honestly did not want this book to end

From The Ground Up - The story of a first garden
Amy Stewart
I think I'll re-read pieces of this one - and not necessarily wait until I have a garden of my very own

...and this one is not worth your time

documentation and bibliography are iffy
the better known episodes deserve books of their own, the others are just boring and how did the authors manage just 5 pages on the Krakatoa eruption when Simon Winchester wrote a whole book on it.

I liked the Naked Baroness (Elisa von Wagner) story, but she must be the least explored character on the whole cyberspace - she doesn't even have a Wikipedia article if you can believe it - and the Italian book on which the authors base their tale is from 1978 and apparently out of print...oh well it wasn't that interesting...

Murder & Flowers

Gilding the Lily - Inside the Cut Flower Industry - Amy Stewart
Oscar Wilde and the Candelight Murders - Gyles Brandreth

I'm done with faux-epoch mysteries. After "Crocodile on the Sandbank" and "An Expert in Murder" and now "Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight murders" it's plain to see this genre is not my cup of tea. Gyles Brandreth's book also has some of the most outrageously exaggerated blurbs I've ever seen: (my favourite "If Oscar Wilde himself had been asked to write this book he could not have done it any better" - Now, I don't know if Alexander McCall Smith owes Brandreth money or if the guy has kidnapped his pet, but those are the only two scenarios where I could excuse this absolutely unbelievable comment - Or, maybe he means that if Wilde had been asked to write a mediocre, mistery-that-forgets-it's-a-mystery-because-it's-too-busy-meandering-so-it-can-name-drop-not-so-obscure-period-references-and-implying-Wilde-was-never-an-homosexual he couldn't quite have achieved this massively uninspired and pedestrian book? If so, hats off Mr McCall Smith, you're probably quite right).

Phew. Thank heavens Amy Stewart's book on the flower business is something altogether different. Well-paced, readable, informative and interesting.
It's always difficult to think of flowers as part of an 'Industry' (same with chocolate, I guess) but they are. A massive one, at that. And as with any business some people involved are passionate about the product, others about profit. As a global industry the flower business does its share of wrecking natural resources and exploiting third world workers. But it also offers a way out from a life of poverty and a real opportunity for 'green' credentials and certificates that want to make a difference.
While most information on "Gilding the Lily" wasn't completely new to me (I saw a French TV documentary on the flower business a couple of years ago) I still really enjoyed having the facts more thoroughly explained (not that Stewart ever goes too deep into the boring, fact&figure stuff). She travels to big flower farms in the States and in Ecuador and of course, to the Netherlands and meets many interesting characters that make their living out of roses, chrysanthemums and lilies, in farms, airports, auction houses and flower shops. Stewart has a really sympathetic and friendly narrative tone and I just kept thinking what a nice person she must be. If you're into flowers (who isn't?) or just looking for an interesting, well written, non-fiction book, I'd recommend this one.

Daniel Kalder - "Strange Telescopes"

“Lost Cosmonaut”, Kalder’s first book, was already hovering close to genius with its whole “anti-tourism” schtick (travelling to “nowhere”, or more precisely, those unknown bits in the middle of Russia), but “Strange Telescopes” just raised the anti-travel-writing gambit further: this time he visits universes that only exist in his interviewees heads’.

But first, some infidel bashing: back in 2006 travel writer Rory MacLean (am I the only one who’s thinking conflict of interests?) reviewed “Lost Cosmonaut” and wrote the following:

“(…)as a traveller he has a problem. He doesn't 'much like talking to people'.

(…)He refuses to see that beyond the sterile heritage centres, the superficial cultural resemblances and the wastelands of our age, the world still remains diverse and full of wonders. But then to appreciate that diversity and to experience these wonders the traveller must do one thing first. Talk to people.”

Well, I have a couple of things to say about that for myself and everyone else that dislikes “talking to people”: it is obviously an idiotic notion to think that if you chat up a couple of locals you’ll be anywhere near understanding the place in question – more than likely these are the same people who hang around public squares and monuments trying to find an unsuspecting tourist (or travel writer) to feed the same old stories to. Anyone anxious to talk to a foreigner is probably not that interesting anyway (but try explaining that to tourists).

Second, I read MacLean’s book on the hippie trail “Magic Bus” and have to say that not only it managed to completely bore me on a subject that has interested me since adolescence; it is also completely forgettable (proof? I can’t remember anything about it and I read it last year).

So, with that out of the way, it must be stated that Kalder got over his (perfectly reasonable, if you ask me) dislike of engaging others in conversation, in a spectacular manner. In “Strange Telescopes” he talks to people most of us would avoid making eye-contact with. He enters their homes, travels with them, obeys their commandments, steps wholeheartedly into their worlds.

They are Sergei, leader of the “Diggers” who live on the tunnels beneath Moscow, Edward, hell-bent (excuse the pun) on proving to the world the real danger of demonic possession, Vissarion, the Siberian Jesus and Nikolai Sutyagin builder of a fairy-tale/ horror movie construction, a sky-scraper made entirely of wood.

Is Russia an especially fertile breeding ground for alternate realities? It’s hard to say, though there is definitely something intrinsically Russian about these characters, as they each make clear by their stories.

The best thing about “Strange Telescopes” is its tone. Now don’t get me wrong, Kalder can do dark and even risqué humor with the best, but with his subjects he never falls into the easy trap of condescension. Sure, sometimes they are incredibly frustrating, annoying or just plain boring, but there’s never that disgusting faux “understanding”, that wink-wink “aren’t they just the biggest wackos ever?” best epitomized in this ABC story on Vissarion.

Looking at the world through someone else’s eyes is a difficult feat at best – and when it involves going down a sewer drain, attending an exorcism in rural Ukraine, travelling to Siberia in the dead of winter and risk being mauled by Caucasian Shepherd dogs, who wants to try, anyway? Why, someone who doesn’t like talking to people, of course.

A small parenthesis here:

Travel writing is something I used to think I liked. Then I started getting one pompous, tedious book after the other. Most of the time the (British/American/Canadian) writer will talk a lot - but only to English-speaking expats or the feeble-minded who wait around for Anglo-Saxonic writers in order to bait them with “interesting” stories. It just might be the most masturbatorial genre out there (and let’s not even get into the I-moved-to-(Spain/France/Greece/Portugal/Marocco, etc)-with-(a cello/a parrot/my grandmother) gig). I finally figured that what bothers me about it is the same thing that bothered me about my once upon a time major, anthropology: like it or not, they both suffer from a Tarzan complex “Me-study” “You-subject”. There is always the unspoken fact that we are allowed to observe them, because we can make sense of them. And XX century tourism, of course, followed the same path.

And…end small parenthesis.

So, if I wanted to get all structuralist on your ass I’d tell you that what this Kalder fellow has got going on here, with his anti-tourism, anti-everyday thingy is nothing short of an epistemological revolution. Unfortunately I graduated before I could fully understand these (and other concepts).

Coming from a cold and depressing place to Russia is probably a good antidote against trying to romanticize/criticize every step of the way. Still, let’s give credit where it is due: Kalder avoided with all his might the western need to “make-sense-of”, whether looking for stuff he never got to see, seeing stuff he couldn’t quite believe or listening to people who make incomprehensible choices. Most of the time he didn’t even feel the need to ask “why?” – it was enough just being around them. That’s right folks – he didn’t even talk that much.

The ultimate act of surrender – deliver yourself to the natives.

Stuck in the Middle

So, I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but the “I’m reading” header has stayed the same for the past two or three months. The reason is that I’m stuck way before the middle into “The Perfect Red”. The reason, I think, is that Amy Butler Greenfield is no Michel Pastoreau and “Perfect Red” is no “Black: History of a Color. But I hate leaving books in the middle so I’ll try and get on with it.

Another book I'm stuck before the middle is "Bonjour Blanc - a journey through Haiti"by Ian Thomson. Once again, I'm not sure why I set it aside - probably something more interesting came through the mail. Not that it was rocking my world or anything.

Pets, Exhibits, Symbols

Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots – Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Paris - Louise E. Robbins
New Worlds, New Animals – From Menagerie to Zoological Park in Nineteenth Century - Edited by J. R. Hoage and William A. Deiss

“Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots” and “New Worlds, New Animals” are both published by Johns Hopkins University Press but are very different: the first, by author Louise Robbins is a highly enjoyable book disguised as a boring, thick, academic volume; the second “New Worlds, New Animals” is a thin book written by academics for a 1989 symposium on the history of zoos, and most of them couldn’t help but be academic in tone.

If you find French history, before, during and after the French Revolution fascinating and also enjoy reading up on the history of exotic animals in western societies, “Elephant Slaves” might seem like a gift from heaven. Then you might wonder if this isn’t actually a very dry academic thesis. It’s not. It honestly reads like a good novel only (to my mind) more interesting because it actually opens a door onto the past in order to glimpse a little researched topic.

When we picture French society of the XVIII century, with all its excesses and injustices we probably have to inkling of how pervasive animals, we still today, think of as exotic, were in that society, specifically Paris. Little girls were endlessly devoted to their parakeets, while their mothers might dote on a pet monkey and their fathers on large outside, aviaries filled with parrots and other exotics.

But even if we shrug our shoulders at the excesses of the aristocracy, it is surprising to discover that parrots and parakeets were so popular at the time, and so widely available, that café-owners and all sort of small business owners had and doted on their colorful birds. Even for those unable to afford an exotic pet at the many pet stores of the time, far-away animals were only as far away as the next fair. Here, big cats, lions, wolves, snakes, monkeys, rhinoceros (the rhinoceros that came to Paris at this time, was undoubtedly Clara of “Clara’s Grand Tour”) were paraded for the curious. And as Natural History became a popular past time, the aristocracy and the poor would probably rub shoulders at these outings.

Robbins finds several interesting points of view to analyze the exotics presence in French Society: from their origins which illustrate France’s colonial territories and alliances, to the way in which the king used them to bolster his prestige (and was much imitated by courtesans) and how they were publicly available, not only in fairs, but also in weekly fights. She then takes a look at the Oiseleurs Guild, whose members were the only ones authorized to catch native birds and sell exotics (not only birds, but also monkeys and some felines). Through letters and the fascinating “lost parrot” advertisements in the publication Affiches de Paris the author explores what parrots and monkeys meant to their owners. It may be unexpected to see how similar their feelings were to our modern ones for our pets: they lavished attention on them, suffered immensely when they went missing – there were even manuals published on how to care for bird different species!

Of course, we humans tend to place meaning on just about anything and animals are prime subjects. The way in which we portray (or distort) them to fit any ideology is politic philosophy at its most interesting. In the last chapters Louise Robbins takes a look at how exotic animals were portrayed in press and art and how they served the budding revolution’s imagery.
Ideology and imagery are, of course, complex, evolving beasts and if on the one hand, “slave” animals and the value of “free birds” might have bolstered the Libertè ideals, the royal menagerie ended up being attacked by revolutionaries because those exotics also stood for the depraved luxuries of the rich.

About “New Worls, New Animals” what can I say? Most articles manage to be either too long or too short, despite the fact that actual length is more or less the same. They are either interesting and in that case you could probably read a book on the subject: “Menageries and Zoos to 1900”, “Zoos in the family: Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire Clan and the three Zoos of Paris”, “The Order of Nature: constructing the collections of Victorian Zoos”, “The Value of Old Photographs of Zoological Collection” and the intriguing “Ram Brahma Sanyal and the establishment of the Calcutta Zoological Gardens”, while others are quite boring, to tell the truth. A lot of the article I didn’t enjoy spoke of more modern zoological gardens: in Germany, Australia and America, so maybe that was why. Part of my dislike was also the academic tone of some articles which manage to make even the most interesting subject dry as bone. Frankly, this nearly put me off Zoo history.

Silvio Bedini - The Pope's Elephant

“The Pope’s Elephant: an elephant's journey from deep in India to the heart of Rome” is a book I felt I had to read. After dwelling on the history of the giraffe brought to Napoleon’s court and the rhinoceros that toured Europe in the XVIII century, Silvio Bedini’s book felt almost mandatory. Not only is it about a previous historic episode featuring the travels of an elephant, it involves Portugal.

In 1513 the Portuguese king received an elephant from his appointed viceroy in India. Elephants were not exactly big news. Lisbon had seen the arrival of a few from Africa over the years of naval exploration of its coasts. From 1510 to 1514, some four Asian elephants also arrived to the capital. They were just the present for a man king Manuel wanted desperately to impress and who, though he had almost everything, happened not to have ever seen a live elephant – the newly enthroned pope Leo X.

The Portuguese King needed a papal approval for the sea exploration and colonization he was conducting – a church safe-conduct that declared to rival nations that Portugal had the church’s blessing in finding, occupying and converting new lands and people.

Pope Leo didn’t need much – a Medici by birth he was accustomed to the best of everything and as a pope found no dearth of sovereigns and princes trying to win his sympathy. He was however, a man beset by many physical problems, some painful, and his favorite analgesic seems to have been surrounding himself by everything beautiful and unexpected. The elephant Annone (as Bedini states Hanno, the popular name, is an anglicized version, which he nevertheless uses throughout the book) pleased him immensely. So much, that he had new quarters built for the animal right next to the papal palace so he could visit Annone every day.

Despite this being a subject that interests me, I almost didn’t finish “The Pope’s Elephant” (though I’m glad I kept going). Portuguese names and name-places misspellings are a dime a dozen and after a while it felt lazy. Whether this is more the author’s or editor’s fault I don’t know but in a work of historical research it just looks bad. The first chapters also had a lot of detail on Vatican protocol and practices which, personally, I found unnecessary. Then there are many sources: poems, description of paintings and so on which I felt took attention from the story at hand.

Unlike Glynys Ridley, Bedini doesn’t turn the animal into a protagonist. I guess if the book has one it is pope Leo and even, then not so much. The sort of historical research that reads like a novel has to be written by someone with at least a bit of a novelist’s craft(iness?) Since Bedini is an historian specialized in renaissance scientific instruments, he is definitely not one to anthropomorphize or romanticize. Oh well.

It’s only in the fifth chapter (almost precisely in the middle of the book) that Bedini finally settles into a nice rhythm. Curious, that he should get into a groove in a chapter that firmly digresses from the main story (a few years later, king Manuel decided to send a rhinoceros to the pope, since the elephant had been such a success – however, close to the Italian shore, the boat sank, and although the body is supposed to have washed ashore and then been mounted, to this day the piece has not been found, though there are several bibliographical references to it being displayed). In later chapters Bedini will come back to the rhinoceros enigma several times – making a pair of the elephant and rhinoceros’ different fates in a very interesting way that made me wish that had been his starting point.

I guess there must be an almost incontrollable urge – when you’ve done a lot of research and some of it doesn’t lead you anywhere and some isn’t indispensable to tell your story – to cram it all in the final draft. But a lot of facts do not a good yarn make. It’s a shame really, because there are some great chapters and passages in “The Pope’s Elephant” but I think only the most interested in the period’s history will make it to the end.

Clara, Zamba & Sharon

"Clara's Grand Tour - travels with a rhinoceros in eighteenth century Europe" - Glynys Ridley
"Zamba - the true story of the greatest lion that ever lived" - Ralph Helfer
"The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw - one woman's fight to save the world's most beautiful bird" - Bruce Barcott

“Clara’s Grand Tour” suffers from the plight of the history writer: lack of personal documentation.

It’s all very well to know the baby rhino was bought by a Dutch sail man and brought home to the Dutch Republic and to have some documentation proving her appearance in public in the European Continent, some references in letters or books about her passage and many famous paintings. But at the end of the day Glynys Ridley had to base Clara’s story on very little hard evidence and the reader will surely feel it.

For starters there are many “he must have thought/remembered/planned” sort of constructions that merely highlight the fact that we don’t know what happened. We don’t know for sure Clara was transported by water in some portions of her journey (though Ridley makes a good argument), we don’t know for sure all the places she might have travelled to, or how many made up her entourage, and what kind of difficulties beset her path. If Michael Allin, author of “Zarafa” was able to draw on the extensive correspondence between Ètienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and the Mayor of Marseilles as the giraffe made her way to Paris, Douwemout Van der Meer, the Dutch who bought the rhino was obviously not the journal keeping or letter writing sort and it’s a darn pity. I mean, really, if you’re going to bring home an animal no-one’s ever seen and parade it across the land, isn’t the least you could do to drop a few lines about the whole thing? Maybe it’s the lack of documentation but Van der Meer struck me as a cold fish. I figure if he truly loved Clara he would have written a book about her.

Like Ralph Helfer did, about his beloved lion Zamba. “The true story of the greatest lion that ever lived” might be pegged as a light read (a weekend or long afternoon will definitely kill the beast) if it wasn’t for the fact that you keep getting a headache from all the moments when you hold back the tears.



Helfer was one of those little boys who dreamt of having a lion (they are not the stuff of fiction; I live with one; a grown up one) but he actually made good on his dream. And after his absolute nightmare of a childhood he deserved it. An entrepreneurial young man if there ever was one, he started his animal rental business/ pet store barely out of high-school, and pretty soon got his own ranch where he amassed hundreds of animals used on Hollywood productions.

One day he got a call and a few weeks later a crate: inside was a lion cub that would become the most accomplished show-piece of his ground-breaking “affection training”. Zamba would be able to play with children and lay among lambs but his most incredible trait was the deep friendship (for there is no other name for it) he formed with Helfer in the 18 years he lived. In those years I think they must have been apart few times.

More and more I am awe of people who can have such a bond with wild animals. Our domesticated animals are awesome of course, but, like ourselves they have strayed a little from the deep voice of Nature. A wild animal magnifies that sound within us with every breath.

Of course, if we keep going this way we might just eradicate most wild animals in a few centuries (certainly we seem to be on the way to killing off every large predator around). “The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw” documents what happens when a woman stands up between profit and nature. It isn’t pretty.

Bruce Barcott’s book is a gem and I hope he gets some sort of award (or several). In his real life “Pelican Brief” he tells the story of a corrupt government (in Belize) a greedy Canadian company (Fortis) and the outsider: Sharon Matola an American who arrived in the country in the eighties, and despite having built single handedly its first zoo is still about a hundred years short of being considered anything other than an outsider. Especially when she starts meddling with a proposed dam, to be built on the last nesting site of the endangered scarlet macaw.

Look, I’m not even giving you a summary. Everyone should read this to understand what greedy corporations and governments are doing everywhere: destroying the environment for a quick buck. Oh, and be particularly suspicious when they start shouting “public interest!” because in most cases, such as this one, the general public reaps absolutely no reward. Only a tax hike and more poverty.

Barcott doen’st just stick to the story at hand but digresses into nearby themes which is the way I like it. I know I got a much needed lesson on the workings, history and pros and cons of dams. We should all be more educated about this stuff. So go ahead and read it. I’d be absolutely shocked if you didn’t love it. But be prepared: you will get very, very angry.

Famous Pets & Famous Owners

"Casanova's Parrot - and other tales of the famous and their pets" - Mark Bryant
"Reigning Cats and Dogs - a history of pets at Court since the Renaissance" - Katharine MacDonogh

Okay, let me just start by saying I’m glad I got “Casanova’s Parrot” real cheap because this book is not worth much unless you’re a complete psycho about animal reference books. It’s sort of an encyclopedia (with VERY small entries) about famous people and their pets. It doesn’t have an index, which is absolutely incredible and is not alphabetical. Someone decided it would be better to organize entries by profession (the owner’s not the pets), so you have weird categories like “Belles-Letres”. Oh well. Some pet information is scant to say the least. Some people are listed as having had “a parrot” or “a monkey”. Well, was it a budgie or a cockatoo? A spider monkey or a marmoset?

Other times the information left me with some doubts. And at least in one case (Cardinal Richelieu) “Reigning Cats and Dogs” contradicted the facts on “Casanova’s Parrot”. It seems that the legend that the Cardinal had tens or hundreds of kittens around and that hey were his most beloved pets is likely to be a concocted history, put together by his political adversaries, in a time when cavorting with felines still had the whiff of the demoniacal about it. Still, I did enjoy learning George Orwell had a pet goat named Mabel.

Katharine MacDonogh’s “Reigning Cats and Dogs” is another affair altogether. Extensive in chronology and geography, brimming with notes and bibliography, it got me dizzy with information. That’s a good thing, by the way. Sure, it’s hard to keep all the Henri’s Charles' and Francis’s straight when you’re reading about so many royal houses, but well worth the effort. MacDonogh makes an excellent case in proving how keeping animals mainly for company and emotional solace first arose in the crowned houses of Europe and Asia. From childhood, future monarchs and emperors lived such artificially conscribed lives, with aloof parents engaging in political intrigue (and often more devoted to their own pets than their children) and kept away from children their own age (in an attempt to protect them from disease, child mortality being what it was) that their first hug was probably bestowed on a tiny lap dog.

Lavishly illustrated with both black and white and three (!) sets of color art reproductions “Reigning Cats and Dogs” is a joy for both the brain and eyes. The chapter on “Cruelty and Kindness” can get a little nauseating, but hey that’s history (and regarding certain awful tortures such as bull, dog and cock fighting it’s not yet history, unfortunately). It’s seems as if the powerful have always been at the forefront of extremes whether creating the most pampered pets or killing for sport. For anyone with a love of pets and history I’ve not come across a more satisfying book.