"Animals have shaped our minds, our lives, our land, and our civilization. Humanity would not have gotten very far without them--making use of their labor for transportation, agriculture, and pollination; their protection from predators; and their bodies for food and to make clothing, music, and art. And over the last two centuries, humans have made unprecedented advances in science, technology, behavior, and beliefs. Yet how is it that we continue...

"The story of a bear named Millie: her life, death, and cubs, and what they reveal about the changing wilds of the American West"--

This collection of true stories celebrates the lives of a handful of vagabond dogs who spurned confinement and one-family ownership. Each dog's tale is unique: Boozer had his own bank account and appeared on Good Morning America; Owney spent his life riding U. S. mail trains and can now be seen in the Smithsonian Institute; Greyfriars Bobby snuck into the cemetery every night for 14 years to sleep on his deceased master's grave; Lampo became famous...

"Readers take to the streets beside Susannah to bring home a host of missing pets. Along the way, Susannah finds a part of herself also lost. And when unexpected heartbreak shatters her own sense of direction, it is Ace--the shelter dog that started it all--who leads Susannah home. Inquisitive, instructive, heartrending, and hopeful, Where the Lost Dogs Go pays tribute to the missing dogs--and to the found--and to the restless space in between." --...

"Humans were surrounded by other animals from the beginning of time: they were food, clothes, adversaries, companions, jokes, and gods. And yet, our companions in evolution are leaving the world - both as physical beings and spiritual symbols - and not returning. In this collection of linked essays, Alison Hawthorne Deming asks, and seeks to answer: what does the disappearance of animals mean for human imagination and existence? Moving from mammoth...

Last Chance Mustang is the story of Samson, a formerly free-roaming, still wild-at-heart American mustang that was plucked from his mountainous Nevada home and thrown into the domestic horse world where he was brutalized and victimized. After years of abuse, Samson had evolved into a hateful and hated, maladjusted beast until the day he found his way to a rural Illinois farm, an ill-equipped owner, and one last chance. Mitch Bornstein's task was to...

"A deep-time history of how humans engaged wildlife in North America, by the best-selling and award-winning author of Coyote America. In 1908, a cowboy discovered bones from an extinct giant bison near Folsom, New Mexico. When archeologists found handmade weapons embedded in the fossils, the discovery vastly expanded our continent's known human history, but also revealed the long-standing danger Homo sapiens have presented to their fellow animals....

Building on evolutionary science, archaeology, behavioral science, and the firsthand experience of watching his own dog evolve from puppy to family member, Franklin posits that man and dog are more than just inseparable; they are part and parcel of the same creature.

"For the whole of human history, we have lived alongside birds. We have hunted and domesticated them for food; venerated them in our mythologies, religions, and rituals; exploited them for their natural resources; and been inspired by them for our music, art, and poetry. In Ten Birds That Changed the World, naturalist and author Stephen Moss tells the gripping story of this long and intimate relationship through key species from all seven of the world's...

Gotham Chopra considers himself a pretty average guy, but his childhood wasn't quite so average. Growing up, he was exposed to the deepest reservoirs of knowledge that his famous father, Deepak, could find; his childhood was part spiritual, part scientific, and totally unique. Now a newly minted father himself, he's contemplating the influences he wants to draw on for his own son. The first was his father. The second was unexpected: his dogs. The...