Pet Books

I like the book very much. You should read it.Marvin gets to watch his teachers dog Waldo while she is on a trip.Marvins friends ask him lots of questions. It is a verry good book.
by Kelton

When the school bell rings the action is just getting started when Marvin RedPost is alone in his Teachers House!

Good book doesn't live up to title

This book made me sad because there is a death in the book. I also hated the way Marvin's "friends" treated him. They didn't act like real friends should. The book describes a very mean substitute teacher... I don't like that. The only thing good about the book was Marvin's nice teacher.

Find out what it is like to go in your teacher's house in this Marvin Red Post book. Marvin Red Post is a little boy. He was alone in his teacher's house. Marvin was babysitting his teacher's dog. The author sends a message about being nice by helping others. The pictures are good but the words help you see the book in your mind. Read Marvin Redpost: Alone in His Teacher's House By: Luis Sachar to find out what happens to Marvin as he watches the dog.

I picked up this book after reading Sachar's "Holes" to my elementary aged kids, and I was very pleased with the content. In this book, Sachar allows his readers to see life from the perspective of a regular, everyday kid -- and reading it inspired a "what-would-you-do-in-that-situation" dialogue with my own regular, everyday kids. I truly appreciated seeing a young person in this age range (the 3rd grade-ish Marvin Redpost) portrayed as having a conscious, a sense of responsibility, and the awareness to have compassion for others. Marvin is faced with a pretty grown-up sized situation concerning a beloved pet, and I think it's handled with grace and tenderness. I was pleased to see my children feeling compassion for this character, and I'm looking forward to reading more of Marvin's adventures to my own kids.

Being new to bird dog training I must say that this book is a MUST READ.
If you follow Delmar's methods to the tee or not, it gives a great insight into a dogs mind. Delmar also gives a little insight into the human mind as well. If you want to train a bird dog, Buy this book!!!

This is my first time owning and training a gun dog. I purchased and read this book before I bought my puppy. I was skeptical but Delmar's methods DO work. This book set the basis for what others would try to teach me later-- and I was able to share information with them as well. My dog performed at an early age as a result of Delmar's advice. You have to be able to go along with the writing style -- which I found quite humorous and much more fun to read than a text book. A great addition to any library!

_little girl with big dog

The Delmar smith methed is a great way to train a hunting bird dog. One of the best things about this book is knowing what is important to your bird dog. Nine out of ten people now days will tell you to start training on birds before pups learn to run. Not Delmar. If you let them be a pup for the first year you will have twice the dog you would have had!! Very informational. Think like a dog to train a dog...

I used this book 20 years ago to train a Brittany and have now purchased it again for a new dog. The methods and advice are not only unique to Delmar but also highly effective. Not to mention a humorous read.

The real strength of this book is that it gets you in the right mindset for gun dog training. The techniques are simple yet ingenious. I've used most of them and built my training foundation around Delmar Smith's principles.

Buy this book and several others. See a professional trainer. There's no harm in educating yourself.

How To Behave So Your Dog Behaves--A practical and intelligent guide for dog owners

by E. Kathryn Meyer, VMD
President, American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior

The first thing that engaged me in Sophia Yin's How To Behave So Your Dog Behaves was its title. As a veterinarian who treats behavioral problems in dogs and cats exclusively, I strive to teach my clients that we can't use a magic wand to eradicate unwanted behavior in dogs. We have to first understand the behavior and then devise methods of changing the behavior in a positive way--usually by giving the dog a good reason to engage in an acceptable alternative behavior. If we read our dogs correctly, we can teach them what is desired and then use motivators specific to our individual dog and situation to reinforce the right stuff. Dr. Yin's book is aptly titled and provides a wealth of science-based information translated into witty and easily understood language, accompanied by helpful and charming illustrations.

To build a foundation of basic dog knowledge, Dr. Yin first educates the reader about the origin of dogs, their social behavior, and body language. Then, she introduces and explains the science of learning, its potential and its limitations. But the real gold mine for dog owners lies in the Five-Minute Guides covered in the last two sections of the book on Basic Good Dog Behavior and Solving Common Canine Problems. The first section gives the reader explicit instructions on how to teach very specific behaviors that are incredibly important to having a well-behaved, well-adjusted dog. The recommendations for "Say Please by Sitting" and "Walk Nicely on Leash" are the most effective tools I've encountered for creating a well-mannered dog--substituting specific and acceptable behaviors for unruly behaviors that are often unknowingly reinforced by owners. (Do you look at, speak to, and/or touch your dog when he jumps up on you? Bingo--you're rewarding that behavior!) Methods to train other very important basic behaviors, such as learning to focus on the owner with "Watch Me," coming when called, staying, and going to "your place" are also thoroughly described.

In addition to covering the prevention of problems, Dr. Yin also devotes a section to solving some common behavioral issues encountered by dog owners. The problems are briefly described and recommendations are outlined for such topics as Housetraining, Chew Training, Food Possessiveness, Aggression Toward Non-Family Members, and Barking.

For the intellectually curious, this book provides the reader with a goldmine of information about the natural behavior of dogs, learning theory, and applied animal behavior. Of particular note is the inclusion of two landmark scientific papers on animal learning by Keller and Marian Breland (1951, 1961), in their entirety, in an Appendix. Dr. Yin prefaces these articles by giving a brief historical perspective of "How the Science of Learning Made it to Animal Trainers" and then whets the reader's appetite by providing an interview with Marian and her second husband, Bob Bailey. I would encourage anyone with even a flicker of curiosity about animals and how they interface with their environment to read this section--paying particular attention to how the 10 years of experience training thousands of animals changed the outlook of the authors in terms of the role of instinct and limitations to learning.

If you are more utilitarian in your approach to reading this book, it will still be of great use to you. The reader can simply consult the "Five-Minute Guide" section on common behavioral problems to learn about a specific issue. A glossary is also provided, which will help the reader understand terms that may be unfamiliar. However, I would strongly urge the reader to review the entire Guide to Basic Good Dog Behavior section prior to addressing specific problems for best results.

"How to Behave So Your Dog Behaves" is a fabulous resource for every dog owner. All of the tools you need to allow your dog to be the best dog (and best behaved dog) he can be are at your fingertips. These approaches are truly a "win/win" for dog and owner alike.

I'd been hearing good things about Sophia Yin for a while, and since I like to keep up with new trainers who've got innovative ideas, I thought I'd give this book a look-see. Sad to say, I was more than a bit disappointed. Before I go further, I'm an author myself, so I don't want anyone to NOT buy this book based on my review. It's actually a fun, easy to read manual, giving the reader the basic highlights to the methods used by "modern, positive" trainers. I loved the clever, nicely drawn illustrations. The writing is clear and concise. And, as with most "positive" training manuals, if you follow the methods carefully you probably won't screw your dog up too much, at least not like you would by following the advice in books by the Monks of New Skete, or Cesar Millan. I call the kind of approach Yin uses "dog training lite", and give HOW TO BEHAVE SO YOUR DOG BEHAVES a B+ in that arena.

Here's my main criticism: dogs have deep, instinctive needs that Yin and most "positive reinforcement" based trainers don't understand. Their philosophy, and Yin's, is that play is just another way of rewarding good behavior. That's okay, there's nothing wrong with that, but Yin doesn't seem to understand that there's actually a lot more to play than mere positive reinforcement. It's the basis for all learning in dogs, because even though they no longer need to hunt for a living, their instincts still make them need to behave as if they did. That's why most of the games dogs play involve some aspect of their prey drive.

Here's Yin's view: "Both wolves and dogs have a prey drive, but the drive is more dangerous in the wolf. Thus,...tripping and squealing in the presence of a wolf could trigger an attack."

Perhaps it would trigger an attack, but it WOULDN'T trigger the prey drive. What she's describing is more of a fear-based reflex than a predatory motor pattern. And by the way, a dog's prey drive--if not given a proper outlet through play--is actually a lot more dangerous than the wolf's prey drive could ever be. In a later chapter Yin almost says as much, in that she tells us that the prey drive is what causes dogs to chase and bite children, which is partially true. But Yin neglects to mention, or even consider, that the prey drive is also what causes dogs to want to heel, and stay, and come when called. In fact, almost all obedience behaviors have their origins in the predatory motor patterns of wild wolves. Even the very act of obedience is directly related to the way wolves hunt together in a spirit of group harmony and cooperation.

Which brings up another problem: Yin perpetuates the outmoded view that canine social behavior centers around conflicts over who's alpha and who's not. This idea, which has now been disproven, was based on studies done in the 1930s and 40s on wolves living under the stress of captivity. Wild wolves don't form hierarchies. So what we've been taught were "dominant and submissive" behaviors are based on stress, and are not part of a dog's natural social instincts. Yet in HOW TO BEHAVE SO YOUR DOG BEHAVES, Yin frequently refers to dogs wanting to "wear the pants in the family", and has a whole chapter on "Dominance Aggression: A Struggle for Status", making her no different philosophically in this one regard than the Monks & Cesar Millan!

I DO give Dr. Yin points for printing "The Misbehavior of Organisms", a 1961 article from AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST, which details some conditioning failures where a group of various species were taught to push a button to get food, but ultimately preferred producing instinctive food-related behaviors even though those behaviors weren't reinforced. In fact, an experiment with a group of pigs had to be stopped or the animals would've starved to death! As a result, the authors of the study, Keller and Marian Breland (now Marian Bailey), wrote, "There are definite weaknesses in the philosophy underlying these techniques." There still are; instincts still trump conditioning, as any dog owner who's tried to lure his dog away from chasing squirrels or the neighbor's cat could tell you.

I don't mean to be too hard on Yin personally. I gave the book 3 stars, and I wish her well. At least her techniques don't usually CREATE behavioral problems like the Monks and Cesar's do (though clicker training has been shown to cause hyper-anxiety, and to increase scavenging and counter-surfing problems in some dogs). And as I said, this is a great version of a "dog training lite" manual. I just think that Yin needs a better understanding of the power of play, and what your dog's prey drive is really all about.

This is hands down the best book on training dogs I have read. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give it a 6. Although I would have preferred actual pictures to the drawings, the drawings are entertaining and effectively illustrate the points being made. Her techniques are kind to the dog, easy to follow and have very effective results. I've begun using the techniques described in this book with a dog I recently adopted who had been badly abused in his prior life. He responds with enthusiasm, and really enjoys his lessons. I would recommend this book to anyone who owns a dog, whether they think their dog needs training or not!

I found this book extremely useful in training dogs. The emphasis is on understanding dog behavior so that you can effectively communicate with them. I have seen vast improvements in the dogs I have employed her technique on and I highly recommend this book!

Sophia Yin has one of the best approaches I have read to explaining how dog's learn and then applying this to effective, humane training techniques. She not only explains "how to" but "how come." I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has invited a dog to become part of the family.

I bought this the other day for the bargain price of $4.62 through the Amazon marketplace. It arrived in under 7 days and in excellent condition.
The author is an experienced rabbit handler who has worked for years with the House Rabbit Society (Google same for their web site) to care for, and advance the cause of, rabbits.
In particular, Harriman does an excellent job accounting for the rabbits' needs, social as well as diet. She makes it clear that rabbit ownership is not at all like owning a pet turtle, and lays out clearly what you'll need to be ready to provide for them in terms of care and, for want of a better word, "mateship"--rabbits are intensely social animals that need to be involved in the life of a family.
We will probably be adopting our first rabbit in the next year or so. Harriman's book turned out to be an excellent primer, and I'd recommend it without hesitation!

As a first time rabbit owner, I found this guide very informative. It is a must have for any rabbit owner.

I'm not sure I understand why this book has received so many positive reviews. While the writer clearly has plenty of experience with and knowledge about rabbits, the information is not well organized and is often unclear. For instance, in the section on bunny-proofing your home, she never provides a simple list of the hazards and what to do about each. Instead, she opens with a list of questions and then transitions into a list of solutions--but the lists aren't coordinated. At one point, she mentions a solution for hiding hardwood floors and baseboards, but she never says what bunnies *do* to either. Chew? Scratch? How? I need a list of everything bunnies might damage followed by solutions for each. Another example: In the section about multiple rabbits, she focuses on introducing rabbits to each other but says very little about adopting a bonded pair. Is this better than adopting a single bunny? Why? Is it more or less work, and in what way?

My sense is that the author has been dealing with bunnies for so long that she doesn't quite know how to talk to a beginner--and that the editor doesn't understand the benefit of numbered and bulleted lists.

If you are only going to purchase one book about house rabbits this should be the one. I have purchased several and taken several out of the library and this is still the first one I pick up when I need information.

This is the single best written resource for people new to the world of house rabbits.

I needed a book for students getting to know horses for the first time.
This book provided the information they needed in quick and easy slices.
This laid the ground work for more intensive sessions which they will receive later on in their veterinary and general animal care courses.
I am very pleased with this book.


G.Stratton, SGU.

This book is good for folks who have a basic knowledge of horses but want a little further advice. People who haven't had lessons or are just starting to work with horses for the most part will get confused easily. I got this book for a friend and while there is plenty of useful information tha main things we were looking for were hoof care. The most useful information I found was the section on tying the horse and approaching the horse. This book is helpful but definately not a complete source. We actually got Horses for Dummies and THAT book had ALOT of helpful information... including information on what you should consider BEFORE you become a horse owner.

I condsider myself a beginner. This book is very simplistic.
I learned most of these things in the first month of taking lessons. If you have a minimal amount of knowledge, this book would be a waste. Don't waste your time or money. I wish I hadn't.

I bought this book because I thought it would be just as good as another in this series "Getting the most from Riding Lessons". I was really looking for specifics on grooming with highly detailed photos and step by step highly detailed instructions and tips. This book has some of this.

There's a good section on catching, tying, and handling the horse. There is some basic safety information omitted.
The hoof care is completely lacking. There is only information on how to lift and support your horses feet. This should be a VERY detailed section of the book considering how important it is to a horse.
Daily grooming info is only OK.
Washing section is acceptable to good.
Clipping section is good but doesnt cover special clipping patterns.
Mane and tail care and braiding is good.
No leg wrap information is included.
No transport of horse information is included.

This all said - it's really hard to find a great grooming book.

This book matches exactly what the title says it is providing the beginner with the basics of handling and grooming on a horse that is use to both (in my mind set it pretains to a very gentle well trained horse that is use to a lot of handling, like someone else stated a sound horse).
The pictures and text appear to be complete on how to do things right and it's my kind of book, no long winded, wasted or unneeded words to make a bigger book thus wasting my time or book shelf space.
It does just cover the basics on how to do it (not with a horse that is unruley) and on handling you will quickly out-grow the book. It does contain more information on grooming than it does handling so if you are new at that it should be very helpful.

Book arrived quickly and in perfect condition.

Valuable information for everyone who does pet therapy with their dog. I wish I would have read this before I began pet therapy. An excellent easy to understand book.

One of the best Therapy Dog books I have read! Kris Butler shares her wealth of experiences so we all can contribute, learn, and benefit from her knowledge.

The book covers everything from the dogs, patients, health care professionals to the organizations we work with. It also covers therapy certification organizations.

Being a small therapy dog owner and reading about their special needs and outlook of the world, really acknowledged their "special gifts and our obligation" to them as therapy dogs.

I would recommend this book to anyone considering therapy dog work or an experienced therapy dog team.

I can not thank Kris Butler enough for writing this book. I have been a very active dog therapy visiter this last year and visits were going very well until I started visiting a behavior health unit at a local hospital. My boxer dog became very stressed and I was very concerned. After reading Therapy Dogs Today, I became very proactive in how I did my visits to these BH units from what I had learned from this book. The very first visit after reading this book, I could not be happier about how my dog responded to the visit. Once I understood how stressful this environment was for my dog and what were the stressors, I was than able to work on reducing these stressors. Both my dog and I thank you Kris!

Kris has provided us with great new insight and tips into our work with therapy dogs. The examples are wonderful - and in my mind one of the best parts is on her discussion of social proximity and how important it is to understand this in ALL of our visits. A job well done!!! A must read
Kate Nicoll, MSW, author Soul Friends: Finding healing with animals, founder Soul Friends, Inc.

This book is very complete with information and diagrams for all parts of the horse and how they move. Well written and a great resource to refer back to. Lots of detail on muscle groups and what they do. If you are interested in bio-mechanics, this works! I do lots of ground work with dressage horses and rehab for injured and arthritic horses. This resource is particularly helpful for me.

Yes, Ms. Harris did the sketches. Her sketches really capture the movement of the horse and enables you to breakdown the gaits and jumping actions to see what is really happening. Utterly fascinating!

An excellent presentation of the elements of balance in the horse's movement at various gaits. The illustrations (Did Ms Harris do them?) are grand and support the text very well. It is an excellent resource.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking to fully understand the basic gaits, movement and conformation of the horse. There is information on the natural gaits of the horse and how a rider can enhance or hinder the horse's movement and balance. The format will assist both novices and advanced equestrians. It is written in easy-to-understand language. The information is also very accessible simply by browsing through the illustrations. This book would be a great addition to any horse enthusiast's library.

Starts with many natural case histories for psychic pets, then describes his brilliantly simple experiment. I interviewed Dr. Sheldrake on my Skeptiko Podcast. He's extremely well-spoken and likeable.

In "Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home" Rupert Sheldrake continues his quest for acknowledgement of phenomena neglected, forgotten or brushed aside by modern science. This time he focuses on the unexplained powers of animals.
Starting with the observations of pets, through behavior of wild animals, to humans, Sheldrake examines the connections and bonds between living creatures, which lead them to feel each other's emotional and physical state.

Probably all pet owners and people fond of animals have observed that some animals demonstrate behaviors that cannot be explained by genes or instinct (or, that would be too much simplified by such explanation). Wondering, how the pets know, when their owners are coming home, when some accident or death occurred, how to find a way home from an unfamiliar place even far away, when the owner intends to give them food or go for a walk, or how to recognize an attack of an illness such as diabetic coma or epileptic seizure, or even the natural disasters, like storm or earthquake, probably happened to all pet owners some time or another - and most of the time these thoughts were probably bagatelized and quickly forgotten in the face of more important everyday events.

The book is very well ordered and organized, very much like a scientific publication. After a short, introductory chapter, summarizing the history of animal domestication, Rupert Sheldrake presents the data gathered during his systematic studies, mostly through surveys in different parts of United States and Europe. The data consists of examples of pets, which exhibited behaviors described above, collected and analyzed in impressive amounts (even with statistics). Not only does he report accounts from the owners of dogs and cats, but also gives examples of horses, rabbits, birds and fish, and negative examples of pet reptiles and insects. He proceeds from these examples to the flocking and migratory behaviors of the wild animals (the linking behavior is the return home) and compares the findings to the human abilities, which, in the contemporary, civilized world, seem ridiculously meager.

The main body of the book consists of these examples and this is its strength (as a scientific argument) and weakness (as a popular book, because the lengthy lists of examples can be boring). The conclusions, however, are not very strong. Sheldrake applies here his famous hypothesis of morphic fields, which, in analogy to magnetic and electrical fields, are created by forces - yet undescribed -which are, in turn, created by social influence between individuals. The existence of morphic fields is an interesting hypothesis, but only a hypothesis. Luckily, Sheldrake admits it himself and does not push his hypothesis as a theory or as a universal truth, like some gurus of fashionable, popular "science" books. I have to give him great credit for being a scientist even though what he does is beyond the scope of contemporary science. The same goes for his explanations of animal behaviors by their ability to precognize certain events or by telepathy. Telepathy, or mind-to-mind-communication, seems especially plausible as an explanation of pets knowing their owners intentions before the owner can communicate them in any other way (body language, any sensory signal). Although telepathy is obviously his favorite explanation of communication between pets and owners, between animals in the group, and, almost lost, between humans, Sheldrake does not give it as the only explanation. He always tries to show other ones and, giving arguments for and against each one (sometimes, admittedly, not very strong) dismisses them or not. His approach reminds me very strongly of the approach of psychologists, which very often are vague as well. That is perhaps why I liked the chapters on the migratory birds most, maybe, because, as a biologist, I see most of the ecological and "harder science" in it?

At the end of the book, the methods for investigation of pet behavior are presented, so that the interested readers can try their own experiments, which are very simple and do not require much skill - only perseverance.

I like Sheldrake for pursuing his goal of presenting to the non-scientific crowd of readers the alternative or once studies, but today neglected, scientific questions, without cheap trick or want for fame. He is doing his job and I admire his work, even though I have my doubts about it. I don't think this book was supposed to convince anybody of anything (as some previous reviews suggest), it rather intends to puzzle and ask questions, making the reader realize they cannot be unequivocally answered with the current state of knowledge. This book is not his best (some are really great), mainly because of endless lists of examples, but it is good and solid.

Sheldrake makes scientific inquiry not just adventurous and rigorous, but also playful and friendly. His experiments are designed to involve many people in testing theory after theory to account for animal behavior. How do pets know when the vet is coming? How do animals anticipate earthquakes? How do they know to give up waiting by the door, when their owners change plans and postpone coming home?

Sheldrake's experiments, surveys and documentation always prove entertaining. With Sheldrake, science becomes a community experience, open to all who are curious and willing to put their minds together.

This book was well-written, engaging, and thought provoking. The research was very well done, and I am usually quite skeptical. But this opened up a whole line of thought of how our minds may work, for me. I definately recommend it.

Some dogs seem to know when their owners are coming home. No, not when they are walking up the front steps, but when they are still at the office DECIDING to come home. Some animals know when their owners are in distress or dying, far away. Some animals know when their owners are about to have a seizure, or attempt suicide.

Author Rupert Sheldrake has compiled a database of hundreds of fascinating anecdotal reports, supplemented by simple but clever research studies. He challenges us to consider these unusual but intriguing phenomena, that do not depend on physical distance or any known sensory pathways. He has a healthy respect for scientific method (and uses it when he can) but none at all for scientific dogmatism. To skeptics who discount these remarkable observations as mere "selective recall," he says, do the research and prove it.

This is a fascinating and well-written book. It was hard to put down, and in fact, I may read it again. To be sure, Sheldrake can't explain the phenomena he describes. He invokes the concept of morphic fields but can't really tell us what they are. Further research is needed, and, to his credit, Sheldrake is attempting to recruit people all over the world, to participate in just such research. Why, even you could participate. I recommend this book highly. Run out and buy it today. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

The Equus Illustrated handbook on the anatomy of the horse was exactly what my 14-year-old granddaughter wanted for her birthday. She plans to be a veterinarian and is collecting books to read and study. It was so easy to find the book, order and have it shipped to her. It saved a trip to the bookstore and or the post office. Marvelously easy.

Even if you have only a passing interest in Ancient Rome, this work is completely entertaining and informative. It's eye-opening to learn how much the Romans actually knew of the world; knowledge that would be lost for a thousand or more years before being re-discovered. It's also remarkable to see how much they were wrong about. So much of it is genuinely funny, too. A story comes to mind about a dolphin in the port of Ostia that was friendly with the sailors and locals. They became so enamored of it, they "honored" it by anointing it with a full cask of perfume! Pliny expresses the confusion felt by those who then watched the poor animal swim off unevenly and not return for several days! Some gratitude!

Aside from the fact that this abridgment is just plain fun to read, it provides an insight into the soul of the Roman people that you just can't get from reading Tacitus, Josephus, or Caesar.

Yes, yes, I know. It is the mark of great hubris to give 2 stars to a book that has survived over 2000 years and been a favorite work of many of history's top thinkers and achievers. Pliny's good enough for Petrarch, but not good enough for jrmspnc, eh?

That's not what the star rating is about at all. Rather, 2 stars reflects my own, entirely subjective impression of the work. Is this a book that I want to pick up and read for fun? No. Is this a book that scholars of the ancient world should read? I don't know, I'll leave that to the scholars.

What we have here is, to a modern reader, more of a Guiness Book of Records than an encyclopedia, although it is clear why Pliny may justly be called the first encyclopedist. There are some "tall tales" here, reports of creatures with no heads, or backward feet, of people who never laugh, and of people who live to be hundreds of years old. And there's lessons in mineralogy, botany, zoology, and so on.

In short, the book is exactly as advertised. It is also, to one who looks for skilled prose and historical narrative, fairly tedious. The nuggest that fire the imagination are few and far between. Again, exactly as advertised so I have noone to blame but myself. I just don't see the average lay reader, with a passing interest in things Roman, getting a whole lot out of this one. Better to read an actual history of Rome, and let the historian cull the good bits out of Pliny.

Healy's introduction does not help matters. Healy spends most of his introduction reciting how completely inaccurate Pliny is, sometimes even by contemporary standards, which does not bode well! So, the reader finds himself constantly thinking, "well, this is wrong anyway, so what's the point?"

The point, of course, is up to each reader to judge. For this reader, there was very little point at all.

It is ridiculous to dismiss Pliny on account of his many mistakes and factual errors and so on.
The way to read this book is the way in which you read that kind of fantastic literature that gives the "illusion" of fact; Borges and Italo Calvino come to mind - the first one had plans for making an edition of Pliny in Spanish, with his prologue, but died before finishing the project (you can check the notes of Borges' Selected Non-Fictions for that); Calvino in fact wrote a wonderful essay on Pliny, included in "Why Read the Classics?", a book everyone giving "Natural History" less than four stars should read urgently.

Let's say it: if Pliny had got everything "right", he would still be used to teach natural science in high-school... and, for that reason, nobody would care about him.

There are people who think that the only documents that tell us something about the past are those written with a clinical, cold eye: the look of an outsider. This book is fun PRECISELY because Pliny wrote down everything that reached his ears without checking the facts -Zeus bless his heart-, and because of his welcoming disposition, a geography of the common imagination of that time has been preserved; something that otherwise would be lost.

Not long ago some people around this parts believed the Russians ate their own children. A good number among us are certain that paying someone to listen to your problems for fifty minutes every week, allows you to confront your unearthed traumas and clean up your life. Maybe in a thousand years all this will be just the mythology of our time. A few days ago scientists started to suspect Pluto is not a planet after all, so all those books written about it in the past century... they are mutating already into vintage science fiction.

In the meantime, how can anyone not be interested to know that "there is a record of 120 (mice) being born from a single mother, and in Persia of mice already pregnant being found in the parent's womb; and it is believed that they are made pregnant by tasting salt"(X, LXXXIV)? Or that "the day on which King Pyrrhus died, the heads of his victims, when cut off, crawled about licking up their own blood"(XI, LXXVII)? Or that "some people are born with a hairy heart, and that they are exceptionally brave and resolute. An example being a Messenian named Aristomenes who killed three thousand Spartans. He himself, when severely wounded, was taken prisoner and for the first time escaped through a cave from confinement in the quarries by following the routes by which foxes got in. He was again taken prisoner, but when his guards were fast asleep he role to the fire and burnt off his thongs, burning his body in the process. He was taken a third time, and the Spartans cut him open alive and his heart was found to be shaggy"(XI, LXIX)?

How can anyone not enjoy fragments like this one: "The most learned authorities state that the eyes are connected with the brain by a vein; for my own part I am inclined to believe that they are also thus connected with the stomach: it is unquestionable that a man never has an eye knocked out without vomiting."(XI, LIV)? Or his unique way of defining the eyes, "the most precious part of the body and the one that distinguishes life from death by the use it makes of daylight"(XI, LII)?

How can this miniature ancestor of Kafka be forgotten: "It is surprising that elephants can even climb up ropes, but especially that they can come down them again, at all events when they are stretched at a slope. Mucianus, who was three times consul, states that one elephant actually learnt the shapes of the Greek letters, and used to write out in words of that language: 'I myself wrote this and dedicated these spoils won from the Celts'"(VIII, III)? (Note: all quotations are from the Loeb's edition).

Other reviewer compared the Natural History with the Guinness Book of Records. He probably took a minute off to write the review and then jumped right back to reading his number of People magazine. The Guinness is a compilation of isolated (and insipid) facts. Pliny's is an organic work, as Shakespeare's crowded plays or Montaigne's essays are organic.

Like any great work in human history -from Plato to Galileo, from Dante to Stephen Hawkings- Pliny's Natural History is, first of all, a work of imagination.

This book was pretty good although I had to constantly check most of Pliny's 'facts' with a natural science textbook nearby. I was shocked to find how wrong he was and on so many things. Its like he was just guessing and not performing the necessary experiments. I don't know where this guy got his degree, but that place probably wants to rethink their ciriculum. Quite frankly, with Scientists has ill-informed as Pliny was, its amazing that the Roman Empire lasted so long. What else can you really say?

You can discount this review by the way that I bought this seeking to read the famous account of Vesuvius' eruption. I couldn't remember which Pliny wrote it - and since I have free shipping through Amazon Prime, I just went ahead and impulse-bought the Natural History, without even Googling the Plinys.

Anyhow.

These selections from the Natural History are fascinating. Pliny was an energetic man, hugely desirous of literary immortality, who wrote his books in the interstices of a full career as a soldier and an administrator. Pliny worked when others were asleep; Pliny read and dictated in a sedan chair as he moved about urban areas.

The book is rambling and discursive, full of vignettes, asides, and diatribes. Parts are straightforward precises of other authors (for example, I recently read Vitrivius, and Pliny's section on water and pipes reads almost like a New Yorker review of Vitrivius' coverage of water detection and pipe construction) while other parts are based on Pliny's personal observations. The whole is laced with Pliny's rants about the evils of luxury and greed and the decline of the desire for fame; anyone who wonders about the sustainability of contemporary society will find his complaints about the frivolity and vanity of "modern" men to be nearly as appropriate today as they were almost 2000 years ago.

Healy's translation is clear and easy to read. However, Healy's selections are occasionally jarring, and some of the section titles are annoying and condescending. The footnotes can be repetitive, and are often rather ill-chosen; Healy footnotes Latin terms that are pretty obvious from cognates, while leaving some more mysterious terms completely unexplained. (It's almost as if he were aiming at a particularly incurious high-school audience.) The index is rather poor, but the Key To Place Names struck me as quite good; it's interesting to see how some names have survived (with modification) while others have been swept away by conquering tides, and it's nice to be able to put a location to places that I've seen in other works and just sort of filed under "exotic locations".

Overall, Pliny is not for everyone. I certainly wouldn't recommend it as a first exposure to Roman literature! However, I think any omnivorous reader with even a passing interest in the classics will think their time with Pliny was time well spent. Pliny ranges; Pliny amuses; Pliny will be nice to have on your shelf if industrial civilization does collapse.