Reviews for The Pawprints of History: Dogs and the Course of Human Events

The average rating for The Pawprints of History: Dogs and the Course of Human Events based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-03-10 00:00:00 Paul Phaneuf This should have been a really gripping read for a dog lover like me, and I did find enough interesting to give it 3 stars, but it really slogged along at times. Coren's thesis is that dogs have changed the course of human history. I am sure they did, and he did have a couple of chapters that that reinforced such a belief, but, first of all, one would expect that a history book would be laid out in chronological order unless there was some other organizing principle, like "dogs in war," "dogs of inventors," "dogs as baby sitters," but there was no organizing principle at all, including no chronological ordering. Some chapters are really only about famous people who loved dogs or hated them. Napoleon was of the latter persuasion, although a dog rescued him from drowning when he was in Elba. I guess I have to admit that Napoleon wouldn't have gone on to other defeats had this anonymous Newfoundland dragged him from the water. Other chapters are more to the point, especially the one about how Spanis Conquistadors used legions of attack mastiffs, weighing as much as 135 pounds, to rip Mayan warriors to bits, although I don't think the Mayans would've defeated the Spanish in the long run even without the dogs. The book takes a fascinating subject and shows that a poor writer can ruin any topic, no matter how inherently interesting it is. Still, dogs are undersung in history books. They are also undersung in considering how civilizations have advanced. Dogs were crucial to the building of culture and nations. Coren's book helps to fill that gap in history by virtue of being one of the few books on that topic. too bad it wasn't a better read.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-09-11 00:00:00 Mattheus Episcopo Dogs have played key roles at various times in history. This book describes have acts of various dogs have affected history. From a pet greyhound of Alexandria the Great to the Lion Dogs of the Forbidden City to Presidential dogs, from war dogs to lap dogs, individual pets have affected the course of human events. Some of this is Counter-factual history, i.e. what if type of questioning. If Freud did not have a dog to deal with his own personal problems would he have come up with his ideas of psychoanalysis? If Wagner did not have a dog would he have written as many works as he did? Part of the problem is like that of all social history, not all of the participants were literate. What is obtained about them is from letters and diaries of others and if lucky, comments in other written works. I found this book to be light, easy reading with numerous vignettes about the dogs of several individuals important in history's timeline.