Adam's Task Book

From AUDUBON MAGAZINE, which chose it as one of the thirteen most significant books about nature publishing during the last hundred yers, to Susan Sontag, who hailed it as a "fascinating, incisive work of moral imagination," admirers of Adam's Task have praised it is one of our era's most original and brilliant books about language, domestic animals (dogs, cats, horses), and ourselves. Drawing on the discourses of philosophy and animal training, Vicki Hearne makes a case, in boldly anthromorphic terms, for attributing to the creatures we love, train, and play with, the potential for a "moral understanding" of their relationship to us—the potential, in other words, for nobility and dignity. With a new introduction by Donald McCaig.

A fascinating and complex investigation of the kinds of subtle communication that goes on between animals and humans.