McConnell and her dog Luke: 'If there is such a thing as an amused look on the face of a dog, this is it.'
"It struck me that what binds us to dogs is emotions," says Black Earth animal behaviorist Patricia McConnell of her decision to write her new book. "You may have a really smart dog, but you don't have a primarily intellectual relationship with your dog."
McConnell, also the host of the radio show "Calling All Pets," has written a book that will certainly appeal to anyone who loves a dog ' but has much to teach humans about human behavior, as well. In For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend (Ballantine), McConnell rejects the notion that it's mere fancy to think that dogs experience emotions kind of like we do. For years, perceiving emotions in dogs has been dismissed as anthropomorphism, but here McConnell delves into the scientific work that has been done on the psychology of emotion and the neurobiology of both species.
Actually, humans and dogs have very similar brain structures, hormones and neurotransmitters. Part of why our bond with dogs is so "unbelievably strong," says McConnell, is because they are facially so expressive, and in such similar ways to humans: "I think our love for dogs is way more than the fact that we perceive they give us unconditional love. The other deeply biological reason is that, unlike any other two species, we are bound together by a language of facial expressions."
Almost certainly dogs experience happiness, anger and fear, says McConnell. With more complex emotions often attributed to our furry friends, like guilt and humor, it's harder to say for sure. "I don't think dogs have anything close to human sense of humor or guilt ' but there are times when dogs do things that make me think, 'Hmm, maybe they do.'"
McConnell is concerned about a recent re-emergence of a style of dog training that has people rolling their pets on their backs and forcing them into submission: "That's not the kind of relationship we want to have with our dogs." She hopes that learning more about our dogs' experience of emotions will lead to fewer dogs that are confused or aggressive or biting, "and just lead to more fun! There's not enough fun in the world," says McConnell.
She will be discussing For the Love of a Dog Sept. 7 at Borders West and Oct. 3 at Barnes & Noble West.
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Madison author Margaret George enters the realm of myth with her latest epic novel, Helen of Troy. Unlike the characters in George's previous novels (Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots, Cleopatra and even Mary Magdalene), Helen was not a historical figure.
Writing this kind of fiction, George couldn't deviate much from the overall plot ' "a blessing for people who aren't very good at plotting, like me" ' but because there are many versions of the Helen myth, she felt free to alter details when it served a dramatic purpose.
One pitfall in writing about a time so far removed from our own is inserting anachronisms. George found herself up against a wall in conveying the size of the Trojan Horse without resorting to modern units of measure. She finally described it using human dimensions ' how many men standing on each other's shoulders.
And while her characters had "a whole different view of the universe" than we do, believing, for instance, that a god could take the form of a swan and mate with a human woman (thus producing Helen), she thinks their emotions were not that different from ours today. "I tried to make her a real person," says George, presenting Helen as a woman with both brains and physical courage, and not "a Barbie doll" despite her vaunted beauty.
George has had a busy summer, also publishing a children's book set in Madison called Lucille Lost: A True Adventure, about a turtle that escaped and ended up wandering around Picnic Point. "It's fun because it's very local," unlike her other works, has "lots of tortoise facts," and a happy ending.
George will be reading from Helen of Troy Sept. 21 at Borders West, and also Sept. 14 at the Building 129 Coffee Station, 129 N. Monroe, in Waterloo.
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My Likeness Taken: The Daguerreian Portrait in America (Kent State University Press) by Joan Severa is both an appreciation of this beautiful early form of photography and a specialized, but enjoyable, piece of social history. Severa was urged to do the book by members of the Daguerreian Society, who loaned Severa examples from their private collections to reproduce for the book.
Severa, the former (now retired) curator of costume at the Wisconsin State Historical Society, writes about the characteristics of hair and dress of each sitter, teaching us much about class and social customs of the time. Yet the pull of the book comes from the uncannily lifelike faces of these people from the mid-1900s. And that's from a reproduction; the daguerreotypes themselves, which are images on silver-plated copper (exposed to chemicals, including mercury vapor) are even more lifelike, says Severa, as the images seem to shift as you look at them in the light at different angles: "They have the look almost of a hologram."
My Likeness Taken is "not just for pretty," says Severa, although it is a beautiful book. It was written to help museum curators date images in their own collections. There's no other book that treats daguerreotype images chronologically, says Severa.
One sad fact: Not a single daguerreotype in the book is still owned by a descendant of the person photographed.
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Isthmus news editor Bill Lueders began work on Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman's Harrowing Quest for Justice (UW Press) in 2001, after a DNA match was found for semen left on sheets from the 1997 rape of a Madison woman named Patty. He finished writing shortly after the alleged rapist was tried in 2004.
While the story of how Patty was disbelieved by Madison police, recanted under pressure, and then fought to be believed has been covered in newspaper accounts, the whole story goes much farther, in this book that Kirkus Reviews says "will captivate and outrage readers."
Lueders, who has a Web site (www.cryrapebook.com) that compiles some of the articles and documents generated by the case, will be reading from his new book Sept. 29 at A Room of One's Own, in a benefit event with all proceeds going to the Rape Crisis Center and UNIDOS Against Domestic Violence. The $40 ticket includes a copy of the book, and is available from Room or Isthmus.
Additional readings are Oct. 5 at University Book Store-Hilldale and Oct. 12 at Star Books on Williamson Street. A panel discussion at the Wisconsin Book Festival Oct. 22 will be moderated by Stuart Levitan and feature Lueders, former Madison Police Chief David Couper, former Madison Police Capt. Cheri Maples, a representative of the Rape Crisis Center and Patty herself. The Police Department has also been invited to send a representative; it is still weighing that request.
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Also of note from the UW Press: Stuart Levitan's history of Madison, An Illustrated Sesquicentennial History Volume 1, will be available in November, says publicity manager Benson Gardner. And The Ice Cave: A Woman's Adventures from the Mojave to the Antarctic by Lucy Jane Bledsoe is a big mover, as its adventurous author is currently touring both bookstores and REI stores around the U.S. The Ice Cave looks at how wilderness can provoke fear as well as provide solace in solitude.
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Long Shadows: Veterans' Paths to Peace (Atwood Publishing) contains interviews with 19 Madison-area vets who belong to the local chapter of Veterans for Peace. Compiled by David Giffey, the book also features an introduction by Howard Zinn. Vets whose stories are featured include well-known activist Clarence Kailin (veteran of the Spanish Civil War), UW English professor emeritus Robert Kimbrough (Korean War), WORT-radio host Esty Dinur (Yom Kippur war), and Harmony Bar owner Keith Daniels (Vietnam). The absorbing and complex first-person narratives read as if you're sitting down with these folks over a cup of coffee, and are not just "how I became a pacifist" but hard stories about hard events and difficult decisions. The book release will take place Sept. 9 at Fighting Bob Fest, at the Sauk County Fairgrounds, with a book signing hosted by Rainbow Books.
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Former Madisonian Judy Merrill Larson liked the city well enough that she set her first novel here. All the Numbers (Ballantine) follows the trajectory of grief of Ellen Banks, a teacher and mother of two, after one of her sons is killed in a lake JetSki accident. Larson has lived in St. Louis, Mo., since 1991, but will be back in Madison to read from the book at Barnes & Noble-West Sept. 26. Wisconsin Public Radio will also be featuring the novel on "Chapter a Day" Sept. 18-Oct. 6.
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William Tishler, professor emeritus of landscape architecture at UW-Madison, has written an interesting history of one of Wisconsin's stellar state parks, Peninsula, in Door County. Door County's Emerald Treasure (UW Press) tells the story of this unparalleled piece of land from its Native American inhabitants to the present. Two names familiar to Madisonians were involved in its creation as a park ' John Nolen and John Olin. A worthy companion for your next stay in Door County.
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UW-Madison journalism professor Deborah Blum has been garnering strong reviews for her latest, Ghost Hunters: William James and the Scientific Search for Life After Death (Penguin). This look at the 19th-century American fad of spiritualism (communicating with the dead) is absorbing and less focused on William James than the subtitle suggests.
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Isthmus contributor P.S. Mueller is publishing his second volume of cartoons with Madison-based Jones Books. This one, on the theme of our favorite household pets, is mindful of these domesticated companions' legendary dislike of each other. Starting from one end it's called Cats and Dogs and consists of cat cartoons; flip it around and upside down and the book is called Dogs and Cats and zeroes in on canine foibles.
Mueller and fellow New Yorker contributor Ariel Molvig also have five cartoons each in a new collection called The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker (Simon Spotlight). Described as too silly, weird or risquà for the mag, these cartoon rejects might be funnier than those that make the print version of the mag.
Mueller will talk about cartooning (you can't really give a reading from a book of cartoons, can you?) and sign books at Borders West Nov. 16.
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With air traffic to Europe once again dicey, choose Paris by Pastry: Stalking the Sweet Life on the Streets of Paris (October, Jones Books) as a cheap and safe armchair alternative (safe, that is, if you can prevent yourself from a binge excursion to the closest bakery). It's the adventures of two American women, Parisophiles who take the noms de plumes of Georgette and Jeannette, whose views of Paris don't extend too far beyond finding the next, and best, pastry shop. Author Joyce Slayton Mitchell (Georgette) includes a few recipes for these great concoctions, but fair warning: Tollhouse Marble Squares they are not. The recipe for GÃteau OpÃra, for instance, runs for three pages.
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The indefatigable John Nichols has written The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders Cure for Royalism (The New Press), this time without frequent co-conspirator Robert McChesney. Impeachment, Nichols confides, is a quintessentially American aspect of the democratic system ' "it's a good thing," he notes. Also, Nichols insists that he will have bagpipes at all public events for the book "because impeachment was invented in Scotland." The book is due in October.
LOCAL BESTSELLERS
20th Century Books
FICTION: The Lost Girls by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie
NONFICTION: The Double Life of Julie Phillips by James Tiptree Jr.
Barnes & Noble East
FICTION: The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
NONFICTION: Cow Parade Wisconsin
Barnes & Noble West
FICTION: The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
NONFICTION: Cow Parade Wisconsin
Booked for Murder
FICTION: Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde
NONFICTION: Every Contact Leaves a Trace by Connie Fletcher
Borders East
FICTION: Judge and Jury by James Patterson
NONFICTION: Fiasco by Thomas Ricks
Borders West
FICTION: Star Lake Saloon and Housekeeping Cottages by Sara Rath
NONFICTION: Fiasco by Thomas Ricks
Invest In Yourself
NONFICTION: I Can't Live Like This Anymore by Lilada Gee
Rainbow Cooperative Bookstore
FICTION: Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiongo
NONFICTION: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Room of One's Own
FICTION: Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich
NONFICTION: BITCHfest by Cho, et al.
Star Books
FICTION: Calling Out by Rae Meadows
NONFICTION: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
University Book Store
FICTION: The Zahir by Paulo Coehlo
NONFICTION: Freakonomics by Steven Levitt
