Here are 81 books that Part Wild fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve always thought of myself as someone who “cares about animals,” but I came to see that I was thinking mainly about mammals and birds and overlooking the vast majority of animal life: fishes and invertebrates. I’m a philosophy professor at the London School of Economics, and for almost 10 years now, I’ve also been part of an emerging international community of “animal sentience” researchers—researchers dedicated to investigating the feelings of animals scientifically. In 2021, a team led by me advised the UK government to protect octopuses, crabs, and lobsters—and the government changed the law in response. But there is a lot more we need to change.
I underestimated fish for a long time. I’ve been amazed by recent evidence that some of them will seemingly recognize themselves in mirrors, make logical inferences, or hunt in teams with octopuses.
I found Balcombe’s book an absorbing tour through this new picture of fish: creatures equipped with minds that help them solve the challenges of their underwater worlds.
Endorsed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama - 'Balcombe vividly shows that fish have feelings and deserve consideration and protection like other sentient beings'
What's the truth behind the old adage that goldfish have a three-second memory? Do fishes think? Can they recognize the humans who peer back at them from above the surface of the water? Myth-busting biologist and animal behaviour expert Jonathan Balcombe takes us under the sea, through streams and estuaries to the other side of…
I’m the author of the Peter Pike private eye series. Pike is a beat-up Middle Eastern veteran-turned private eye who finds himself embroiled in mysteries, usually with lost treasure involved: in the huge, sophisticated Indian civilizations that were here before us; in Lincoln’s murky sexuality; in a lost Faberge egg and the downfall of the Romanovs; and with Peter Pike and the Silver Shepherd, some rather nasty (and one nice) Nazi war dogs.
You want heartwarming books about man’s best friend? You’ve come to the wrong place. Novels with dogs don’t have to be heart-warming. They can be quite strange, sinister or both.
Here’s a prime example: The Dogs of Babel, which starts as the heartbroken narrator discovers his artsy, Goth wife has fallen from a tree and died. There are plenty of clues that this was not an accident. But there are no witnesses, except for poor Lorelei the dog. What starts out as a heartbreaking account of grief then takes a sharp turn into the bizarre as the narrator tries to teach Lorelei to speak so he can reconstruct his wife’s last hours. It descends into a seething underground, complete with people operating on dogs’ vocal chords to make them speak. Have I mentioned my list isn’t heartwarming? Did I swipe elements of this novel for my book? You bet…
Discovering clues that indicate his beloved wife may not have died accidentally, Paul Iverson begins a perilous search for the truth while attempting to teach his dog, who witnessed the crime, to communicate.
I made so many mistakes with my first German shepherd, Isis, that I wrote a book about her in hopes of saving other people from the same heartbreak and frustration. Then I wound up living with two more German shepherds with similar challenges. Our current dog, Bailey, was undersocialized before we met her, but our past experience showed us how to help her live her best life anyway. My dogs have enriched my life so much that my favorite books are about the ways they save us as much as we save them.
This book also made me cry, because I related to it so much. When my dog’s behavior kept getting worse on a leash, and then when she bit someone, I felt very much alone. I felt like no one understood what I was going through, and I didn’t understand what was wrong with my dog. I wish this book existed then. It contains all the lessons it took me years to learn. Phenix explains what it means for a dog to be above the threshold and how to use counterconditioning to unring that bell. She also debunks the myth that walking a dog more will solve the problem. Not true when those uncontrollable triggers encountered on walks stack on top of one another, pushing the dog over the threshold and increasing their reactivity.
Aggression is a subject that no dog owner wants to talk about, but one that many owners have to face. Statistics show that aggression is not only the most serious problem in dogs but also the top reason for owners to seek out professional help for their pets. Left unchecked, an aggressive dog can become a dangerous dog, and this informative volume comes to the aid of many heartbroken owners who feel that they have tried everything to correct their dogs' unpredictable and inappropriate behavior. Author and certified dog trainer Annie Phenix shares her belief that many reactive dogs can…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I made so many mistakes with my first German shepherd, Isis, that I wrote a book about her in hopes of saving other people from the same heartbreak and frustration. Then I wound up living with two more German shepherds with similar challenges. Our current dog, Bailey, was undersocialized before we met her, but our past experience showed us how to help her live her best life anyway. My dogs have enriched my life so much that my favorite books are about the ways they save us as much as we save them.
Speaking of wolves, this book describes how wolves and wolfdogs can be safely contained and cared for. Author Nicole Wilde ran Villalobos Rescue Center back when it was a wolf rescue, and is also a specialist in domestic dog behavior. In this book, she opens up about the struggles she had with some of her own dogs. It’s very reassuring to read about experts having the same problems we do. Not only does Wilde describe the animals vividly in prose, but her photographs also are stunning. It bums me out when photos in dog books are grainy and black and white, or worse, when there are no photos at all. I want to see the dogs!
Winner 2015 Silver Award Benjamin Franklin Awards! Have you ever had to save a wolf from a rattlesnake? Or rehabilitate a dog who eats furniture and major appliances? Have you chased a stray wolf down suburban streets in the thick of a winter storm? Nicole Wilde has done all of those things and more. As a professional dog trainer and canine behavior specialist, executive director of a wolf rescue, and long-time Dog Mom, Nicole not only shares wildly fascinating stories of rescuing, training, and living with dogs and wolves, but also offers heartfelt insight into how she solved problems and…
I made so many mistakes with my first German shepherd, Isis, that I wrote a book about her in hopes of saving other people from the same heartbreak and frustration. Then I wound up living with two more German shepherds with similar challenges. Our current dog, Bailey, was undersocialized before we met her, but our past experience showed us how to help her live her best life anyway. My dogs have enriched my life so much that my favorite books are about the ways they save us as much as we save them.
I debated whether to include this book because the author, Iraq war veteran Luis Carlos Montalván, apparently took his own life a few years after it was written, just before the sequel was published. Does that mean Tuesday didn’t “save” Montalván as the title says?
I finished this book wishing that every returning service member could be given a service animal to help navigate their lives after experiencing psychological and often physical trauma. I didn’t warm up to the story right away, because it begins with a description of Tuesday’s training before the author knew him. Tuesday comes alive as a character when Montalván describes their strengthening relationship. Regardless of how the story ended, the healing power of their bond is miraculous and Tuesday did enrich Montalván’s life for the years they were together.
A heartwarming dog story like no other: Tuesday, a lovable golden retriever, changes a former soldier's life forever.
A highly decorated captain in the U.S. Army, Luis Montalvan never backed down from a challenge during his two tours of duty in Iraq. After returning home from combat, however, his physical wounds and crippling post-traumatic stress disorder began to take their toll. He wondered if he would ever recover.
Then Luis met Tuesday, a sensitive golden retriever trained to assist the disabled. Tuesday had lived among prisoners and at a home for troubled boys, and he found it difficult to trust…
I have written about the environment as a journalist since 2005, for magazines and newspapers including National Geographic,The New York Times, and Outside. For my last book, I wanted to write about animals as individuals—not just as units in a species, the way they are often thought of by conservationists. Diving into research about animal selfhood was an amazing journey. It helped shape my book, but it also changed the way I see the world around me—and who and what I think of as “people”!
I don’t read very much fiction (although I want to read more!) but I thought it would be interesting to check out some novels where animals are main characters.
I read several, and this is the one I still think about all the time. The main character is a crow and although the book is a fantastical mytho-poetic adventure through time and space, it is also a wonderful exercise in cross-species empathy.
While you are reading, you really feel like you understand what it means to be a crow. It really stuck with me; I found it really rich and wondrous.
“Ka is a beautiful, often dreamlike late masterpiece.” —Los Angeles Times
“One of our country’s absolutely finest novelists.” —Peter Straub, New York Times bestselling author of Interior Darkness and Ghost Story
From award-winning author John Crowley comes an exquisite fantasy novel about a man who tells the story of a crow named Dar Oakley and his impossible lives and deaths in the land of Ka.
A Crow alone is no Crow.
Dar Oakley—the first Crow in all of history with a name of his own—was born two thousand years ago. When a man learns his language, Dar finally gets the…
When Lara was four years old, her father moved from Rochester, New York, to Anchorage, Alaska, a distance of over 4,000 miles. She spent her childhood chasing after him, flying a quarter of the way around the world to tug at the hem of his jacket.
I have written about the environment as a journalist since 2005, for magazines and newspapers including National Geographic,The New York Times, and Outside. For my last book, I wanted to write about animals as individuals—not just as units in a species, the way they are often thought of by conservationists. Diving into research about animal selfhood was an amazing journey. It helped shape my book, but it also changed the way I see the world around me—and who and what I think of as “people”!
This book tells the true story of an African couple who adopted a lion cub, raised her to adulthood, and then eventually returned her to the wild.
In my reporting on wild pets and reintroductions of captive animals, I learned that Elsa’s story was a bit of a miracle. Such successful reintroductions are very rare. The Adamsons were complex people and their story has an ambiguous legacy, especially given that it may have inspired people who were not really able to care for big cats to try to keep them as pets.
However, there’s no denying that their experience makes for a fascinating read. And by living so closely with her, they were able to see and describe Elsa as an individual, not just “a lioness” interchangeable with any other.
There have been many accounts of the return to the wild of tame animals, but since its original publication in 1960, when The New York Times hailed it as a “fascinating and remarkable book,” Born Free has stood alone in its power to move us.
Joy Adamson's story of a lion cub in transition between the captivity in which she is raised and the fearsome wild to which she is returned captures the abilities of both humans and animals to cross the seemingly unbridgeable gap between their radically different worlds. Especially now, at a time when the sanctity of the…
I have written about the environment as a journalist since 2005, for magazines and newspapers including National Geographic,The New York Times, and Outside. For my last book, I wanted to write about animals as individuals—not just as units in a species, the way they are often thought of by conservationists. Diving into research about animal selfhood was an amazing journey. It helped shape my book, but it also changed the way I see the world around me—and who and what I think of as “people”!
I was absolutely riveted by this short but powerful book chronicling the fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking history of animal escapes from zoos, circuses, and other forms of captivity. Hribal makes the case that these stories of animal “resistance” are evidence that wild animals value their autonomy and I, for one, was very much convinced.
A Siberian tiger at the San Francisco Zoo leaps a 12-foot high wall and mauls three visitors who had been tormenting her, killing one. A circus elephant tramples and gores a sadistic trainer, who had repeatedly fed her lit cigarettes. A pair of orangutans at the San Diego Zoo steal a crowbar and screwdriver and break-out of their enclosure. An orca at Sea World snatches his trainer into the pool and holds her underwater until she drowns. What's going on here? Are these mere accidents? Simply cases of animals acting on instinct? That's what the zoos and animal theme parks…
I was asked in my final year at university, to choose between my degree and my dog. I’d kept a little Yorkshire terrier hidden in my Cambridge rooms for two years before he was discovered and he’d been lovely company as I plugged away at my reading there. I'm pretty confident that I'm the only student who has ever kept a dog at Trinity College. Because of the impact Lassie made on me as a child, I’ve always longed for a collie and now have space for one. He’s called Cedric and is as human and sentient as I. The first book I wrote was about a dog with the loyalty of all the dogs in the world, and with the love of all the dogs in the world.
One story is about a dog and the other is about a wolf, so they’re companion books and mirrors to each other. Both are deeply atmospheric, transporting you to the isolated, raw, cruel wastes of the frozen north, to the world of famine, brutality, and the survival of the fittest. Both stories examine primal instincts: How much dog there is in wolf, how much wolf there is in dog, and how the balance of the primal canine instinct can be tipped by trust in man. Read each one in a day and you’ll never forget them.
Extraordinary both for the vividness of their descriptions and the success with which they imagine life from a non-human perspective, these two classics of children's literature are two of the greatest and most popular animal stories ever written.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library, a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold-foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition of The Call of the Wild & White Fang features an afterword by Sam Gilpin.
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
I’ve always identified as a weirdo and felt misunderstood, which led to lots of wasted time “trying to fit in.” As an adult, I’ve learned to love myself for exactly who I am, but it took a lot of work and self-reflecting. Looking back, I realize there were actually many kids who felt the same way as me and we just never managed to connect with each other! Finding people who “get you” is an important task—but I truly believe self-love and self-acceptance is the greatest goal for all humans. I hope my books speak to the “weirdos” and non-weirdos a like, and encourages all readers to love themselves just the way they are.
Homer the dog is sure he’s a wolf inside! I can relate. All of us have a fierceness inside of us and following Homer on his journey to embrace his inner wolf was funny and inspiring. And I was especially inspired to see that Homer’s wolf journey wasn’t easy (learning to eat raw meat took some time). I often take a long time to embrace being brave, and I love that message for younger readers.
Meet Homer, a dog who heads to camp to live like a wolf! Here’s the perfect book for the legions of kids out there who love dogs and funny books.
Homer is a dog . . . but he also secretly fancies himself part wolf. So when an invitation to attend WOLF CAMP (“Where every dog can live as a wolf for a week”) falls out of his kibble bag one morning, he’s determined to go. After his people finally agree, Homer boards the bus bound for Wolf Camp, along with fellow campers Trixie and Rex. They’re greeted on the…
