Reviews for A Dog's History of America: How Our Best Friend Explored, Conquered, and Settled a Continent

The average rating for A Dog's History of America: How Our Best Friend Explored, Conquered, and Settled a Continent based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-07-11 00:00:00 Atheesan Arudsothy I happened across this book while doing some shelving at work one day, and thought it looked at least mildly interesting. I grew up with dogs (and cats, but there's no Cat's History of America on our shelf), and miss having them terribly. So I thought it would be interesting to learn more about dogs, where they came from, the role they played in our society, etc. I've also been trying to make sure that I read more than just Fantasy and Science Fiction, and this seemed like a reasonably entertaining diversion. My store has a policy where employees can borrow certain books, so I figured, "hey, it will only cost me time, right?" Let's just say I'm glad I didn't pay for it. A Dog's History of America covers American pre-history up through the modern period, and is broken down into chapters by historical time periods. In each chapter, Derr ostensibly discusses how dogs were used, viewed, their influence on society at the time, and so on. I say "ostensibly" because the sad truth is, Derr doesn't spend nearly enough time on the dogs themselves. The first two chapters, on pre-history and the Spanish conquest, are essentially wasted space. The pre-history chapter could have been summed up as "there's no real evidence about dogs, but pre-historic people probably had 'em." Instead, the reader is treated to a half-assed synopsis of land-bridge theory (which, if I understand my girlfriend the archaeologist correctly, has come under serious criticism in recent years), and a little speculation about how dogs might have been used, none of which is particularly shocking or insightful. The chapter on the Spanish conquest was the worst of the book. Again, there isn't a whole lot of documentation, and so most of the chapter is Derr reminding the reader that those Spaniards were evil, evil, people who did evil wrongbad things! Oh…and sometimes they sicced dogs on people, which one of the many evil wrongbad things that they did. 'Cause they were evil, y'know. And the conquest, it was wrong. And evil. Was the evil clear? Now, before I get lynched here…I'm not saying the Spanish conquest WASN'T evil, or that the Spanish didn't commit horrible atrocities, sometimes using dogs. But if I'm reading a book about dogs, I expect to, well, read about dogs, not about the author's other sundry politics and beliefs. There's plenty of books on the Spanish conquest. If I want to know how awful it was, I'll read one. I wanted to hear about dogs. There are more dogs as the book goes on, but there's nothing that really jumps out at the reader. Derr gives every story the most cursory treatment possible, but never goes far enough in depth to make the characters (human or dog) seem lively or interesting. He continuously deviates to discuss his views on human politics that are frankly, unrelated to the topic at hand. There are a few actually dog related political issues that are brought up (such as leash laws, and peoples misconceptions about the dangers certain breeds pose), but most of it just doesn't get in depth enough. In the end, I can't recommend this book. Dog lovers will be disappointed by the lack of interesting stories/characters, and history buffs will be better served reading a dedicated history book. This book tries to both, and ends up doing neither particularly well.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-05-16 00:00:00 William Perry This book was a real eye opener! After reading it I did a number of searches through our university library system and elsewhere for similar works, and found that very little has been written either by historians or anthropologists on the role dogs have played in the historical movements of humans around the world. There's been very little written at all on the role dogs have played in human history. Odd, given that they may have already been domesticated as our species was moving into Neanderthal territory and competing with them. It goes to show how thoroughly we take dogs for granted.