Fans pick 100 books like Man Meets Dog

On the surface, this seems a dry treatise on the process of scientific change, but as you get into it, you encounter again and again the stories of hardheaded researchers convinced that the world explained by current theory just doesn’t make sense and shows how they were driven, often reluctantly, to make sense of things. Priestley’s and Lavoisier’s experiments are included with many others but always set within the framework of a discipline in a “crisis” that needs to be resolved.

The personal costs are not neglected–ridicule, isolation from the accepted “establishment,” sometimes far worse. Scientific progress is often portrayed as a triumph of individual imagination confirmed by wider testing and collaboration. Kuhn’s work took that self-serving myth and tossed it out the window.

Though not a volume pertaining to “hard science,” Mackay’s book is an early and essential inquiry into “group psychology” long before the phrase was coined. I used this and Kuhn’s books as background when writing World on Fire.

Why do perfectly respectable people act against their own self-interests, often violently, I wondered, when drawn into the seductive folds of a crowd? Mackay wrote his first edition in 1841, just a few decades after the convulsions that swallowed up Priestley and Lavoisier, then updated it in 1852: he chronicled the spreading group madness of such historical phenomena as the South Sea Bubble, “alchymists,” the Crusades, witch manias, and the “popular admiration of great thieves.”

Mackay’s 1852 preface crystallized his theme with the question: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds while they only recover their senses slowly and one… show more.

This slim volume, first published in 1995, possibly jump-started the current genre of science narratives–I was certainly well aware of it when World on Fire was published in 2005. The tale begins in 1707 when the English fleet crashed into the Scilly Isles twenty miles southwest of England; two thousand men drowned, all because navigators had misgauged longitude.

The desperate quest for a solution becomes a well-funded race to make sure this never happens again. Sobel chronicles how it was solved by a simple clockmaker, and the obstacles thrown in his path by the more respected members of the era’s scientific establishment. It helps to read Kuhn’s work first, or in tandem: for all the accolades heaped upon success, both works make clear the hard road and lonely life traveled by the outsider.

I love this book, too, but this time for its sheer poetry. This is the flip side of science writing, focusing less on direct cause and effect and more on a prismatic sense of wonder. DeBlieu’s celebration of the wind does all that but is different, for in addition to the physics of airflow and secrets of meteorology, the effects of the wind on biology, geology, and time, her writing drifts and flows like the breeze itself through history, literature, psychology, myth, and past and future dreams.

It’s really quite hypnotic, a seemingly effortless structure intended to mimic its invisible subject, but as a writer, you know how much craft was needed to create the effect. I often thought I wished I’d written that as I happily went along for the ride.

I have always been fascinated and in awe of working livestock guardian dogs. One of our first human/dog partnerships, this group of dogs possesses a unique set of genetically inherited behaviors.

The Coppingers' research into how livestock guardian dogs think and work was groundbreaking and instrumental in promoting the use of these working dogs for predator coexistence in North America.

Expanding their work to include sled, herding, and hunting dogs, the Coppingers also explain how these specific dog breeds acquired their special traits. 

This last recommendation is a bit of a cheat as it doesn’t deal with a challenging journey as much as an exploratory one. But I couldn’t leave it out. Part memoir, part exploration of the relationship between humans and our beloved dogs, my experience of this book was that it is all heart.

I was so deeply touched by author Ted Keresote’s commitment to letting his adopted dog, Merle, really be a dog and not just be forced to fold himself entirely into his human’s life. I found Merle’s story to be deeply touching and revelatory. This is the book I give to friends when they get a new dog.

I loved how different the three main characters are. They’re unlike anyone I’ve met in real life, all at different ages and situations, but I could relate to them immediately. My heart broke for grumpy, widowed George, pushing everyone away, and Lizzie, coming out of an abusive relationship and wondering if she dares to feel love again.

This book filled me with hope. It gave me the courage to think about some of the more painful relationships I’ve been in and consider how far I’ve come. I was also seduced by the beauty of the writing; I kept wanting to go back and reread paragraphs because the descriptions were so perfect. And it made me laugh!

This book touched me in new and unexpected ways. Renowned trainer Suzanne Clothier’s unparalleled insights into dog emotions combine with her compassionate awareness of how they perceive their own worlds. Written with knowing empathy, Suzanne discusses how to meet dogs’ needs for leadership without cruel coercion, and examines how canine culture clashes with human ignorance and insensitivity. Real dog stories show how respectful relationships can save dogs from tragedy and unnecessary destruction. I personally identified with Clothier’s emotions and learned more progressive ways to reach dogs in ways they understood.

I found this book to be a deeply humane exploration of our human-dog relationship from prehistory to the present. It presents the essential ways that dogs changed us and acknowledges the ever-lurking, awful temptation to exploit or harm our oldest friend.

Hobgood-Ostler weaves together canine-human archaeology, history, and literature to show us how we would not have flourished without our dogs, from the earliest days of our partnership to our current lives in which dogs have become actual family members, offering companionship, support, and love.

The original dog whisperer, Paul Owens, teaches dog parents how to positively train their dogs according to how dogs learn. He uses a humane, science-based approach, and includes breathing exercises people can do when stressed so that they can teach their dog in a calm way. The Dog Whisperer goes over how to teach and train your dog during distractions and context learning, as well as introduces readers to clicker training, shaping behaviors and target training. This is a good book on humane, positive training to have on the shelf.