The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs

September 10, 2012
For years whip-smart dogs Lassie and Rin Tin Tinhave trotted across our cultural landscape outwitting villains and lapping up adoration for saving the day. This winning collection of stories, essays, poems, and cartoons gathered from the pages of the New Yorker celebrates the endearing traits of our canine companions alongside some of their more distasteful habits. In sections devoted to good dogs, bad dogs, top dogs, and underdogs, writers ranging from James Thurber, John Updike, Anne Sexton, Marjorie Garber, Jonathan Lethem, and Joan Acocella fondly recall favorite pets, discuss the benefits of obedience training, and speculate on the rational capacity of dogs. Burkhard Bilger’s essay “Beware of the Dog” follows the NYPD’s K-9 unit through a typical day to celebrate the remarkable abilities of its dogs. Garber, in “Dog Days,” ponders whether “to leash or not to leash,” while novelist Cathleen Schine mulls over what happens when bad dogs happen to good people in “Dog Trouble.” Calvin Tomkins humorously sums up the ways that humans impart their own characteristics to their dogs in “The American Dog in Crisis”: “These days, when a dog jumps up on the couch, the chances are he isn’t looking for affection at all. He is trying to tell us that he needs help.” Illus. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME.

September 15, 2012
A New Yorker anthology provides a classy tribute to man's best friend. With a foreword by Malcolm Gladwell (What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures, 2009, etc.), who also authored a piece on Cesar Millan's methods of training out-of-control dogs, and new packaging for older pieces on dogs by great masters of the literary pen (James Thurber, Arthur Miller, Roald Dahl, John Updike and others), this beautiful volume is a winner. There are 18 reproduction covers on the subject of dogs spanning the period from 1933 to the present, a number of them standouts, ranging from the sentimental to the outright satirical. The essays are organized into sections on "Good Dogs," "Bad Dogs," "Top Dogs and "Underdogs," and include a piece about Long Island's Buckram Beagles in the 1930s, a salute to Rin Tin Tin, an essay about dog racing in the U.K. in the 1950s, a profile of Leona Helmsley and her bequests, which have helped establish legal rights for dogs, and an article on the New Tabernacle Baptist Church Urban Hunting Club. These contributions are interleaved with poems about dogs (five of which contain different versions of their authors' drafts), editorial cartoons and nine full-page pictures of doggy subjects. The list is long and impressive, but other notable contributors include E.B. White, Ogden Nash, Donald Barthelme, A.J. Liebling, George W.S. Trow, Donald Hall, Roddy Doyle, Jerome Groopman, Ian Frazier, Jim Shepard, Adam Gopnik, Susan Orlean, Roger Angell, T.C. Boyle, Joan Acocella and Jonathan Lethem. A real treat for New Yorker fans and dog lovers alike.

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October 1, 2012
The title says it all. It's from the New Yorker! It's about dogs! It has a foreward by hot author Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers, 2008)! And, of course, it has wonderful cartoons! This marvelous collection of essays, stories, short humor pieces, drawings, poemsand cartoonscould not have come from any other source but the New Yorker. What other publication has enough good stuff in the vaults to begin each section ( Good Dogs, Bad Dogs, Top Dogs, and Underdogs ) with a piece by James Thurber? Also included are such tidbits as a Roald Dahl story about an attempted fiddle at a greyhound race; Susan Orlean on Rin Tin Tin; Ogden Nash's ode For a Good Dog; a piece on dog whisperer Cesar Millan by Gladwell; an Arthur Miller coming-of-age story involving sex and a puppy; and Anne Sexton's poem on having to love her beloved's old dog. Scattered throughout are doggy magazine covers, artwork, photographs, and the iconic cartoons. A must-have.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)