The Wolf in the Parlor: The Eternal Connection between Humans and Dogs
Selected Book Details
- Hardcover
- Edition: 1
- Author: Jon Franklin
- Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
- Release Date: September 2009
- ISBN-10: 0805090770
- ISBN-13: 9780805090772
- List Price: $25.00
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryA man and puppy exhumed from a 12,000-year-old grave sends a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer on a journey to the dogs Of all the things hidden in plain sight, dogs are one of the most enigmatic. They are everywhere but how much do we really know about where they came from and what the implications are of their place in our world? Jon Franklin set out to find out and ended up spending a decade studying the origins and significance of the dog and its peculiar attachment to humans. As the intellectual pursuit of his subject began to take over Franklin's life, he married a dog lover and was quickly introduced to the ancient and powerful law of nature, to wit: Love me, love my dog. Soon Franklin was sharing hearth and home with a soulful and clever poodle named Charlie. And so began one man's journey to the dogs, an odyssey that would take him from a 12,000-year-old grave to a conclusion so remarkable as to change our perception of ourselves. Building on evolutionary science, archaeology, behavioral science, and the firsthand experience of watching his own dog evolve from puppy to family member, Franklin posits that man and dog are more than just inseparable; they are part and parcel of the same creature. Along the way, The Wolf in the Parlor imparts a substantial yet painless education on subjects as far ranging as psychological evolution and neurochemistry. In this groundbreaking book, master storyteller Franklin shatters the lens through which we see the world and shows us an unexpected, enthralling picture of the human/canine relationship. |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
An astonishing vision masterfully rendered
Rating:
Jon Franklin's quotation from Kipling about the dog becoming forever the first friend of the man and the woman makes a fitting epigraph for his book, The Wolf in the Parlor.
He also might have chosen this one from George Orwell: "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."
The Wolf in the Parlor is the story of a journalist's decades-long quest to see the dog and the woman and the man as they really are.
And this is no ordinary journalist. Franklin's publisher is modest on the dust jacket biography about his achievements in narrative nonfiction. He not only won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing and for Explanatory Journalism, he won the first prizes ever awarded in those categories.
Ostensibly his subject is science, but his real subject is his own species. The story is told in first person, which allows him to develop his hypothesis about the co-evolution of humans and dogs from the perspective of a reporter trying to solve a basic riddle: why are there so many dogs around?
Franklin's hypothesis, like so much of science in the 21st century, is unbelievable on its face. The myths of our ancestors about how the world came to be and why make much more intuitive sense than modern science. The journalist's job is to make unbelievable facts believable, and beautiful and awe-inspiring.
Consider the book's central enigma: at the dawn of human culture, our brains got smaller. It's an undisputable fact. And yet when that happened, we set forth to conquer the world with dogs at our side. As Franklin has noted elsewhere, if we leave this planet someday to explore the stars, we'll bring dogs with us.
By telling the story of his own intellectual and emotional struggle to solve the riddle, he eases the readers' minds into seeing the world and themselves in a new way. That's no easy thing to accomplish. Our human psyche -- with its multitude of self-serving delusions that help us get through the day without going completely bonkers -- resists new facts and perspectives that change consciousness.
The Wolf in the Parlor becomes more deeply intuitive as it builds toward its conclusion. I was in tears as I reached the end of story and the pieces of the puzzle snapped into place, both for the reporter and for myself.
Go read the book and see if you ever look at yourself or your dog the same way again.
Excellent!
Rating:
Part memoir, part mystery, this book is a wonder. Jon Franklin explores questions other people don't think to ask, and as we follow him on his search for answers, we learn about evolutionary biology, the history of everything from dog breeding to brain development, and end by finding a surprising answer to that most basic of questions: who are we, and why? Thoroughly enjoyable, on every level.
Don't understand what you are asking for ?
Rating:
A very interesting and informative book . Every dog owner should read this book .
A walk through our history with dogs
Rating:
It became our morning ritual during the 11 months I was unemployed.
First I felt a cold nose on my leg as I sat at the breakfast table. Next, I heard a faint whimper. Then ...WHAM! ... a dog's head crashed through my newspaper and came to rest on my lap.
The message was clear. "It's time to go for our walk."
Until I read the new book by Jon Franklin, The Wolf in the Parlor (Henry Holt and Company), I thought our walks were all to please Tyrone. Now, I realize that maybe he understood that I needed them as much as he did. If so, he was right. It was difficult to adjust after going into the office almost every day for 39 year. The walks focused my thoughts and reduced my anxieties. And I've lost 20 pounds.
But Franklin's outstanding book goes even further outlining the significance of this relationship between man and his best friend.The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and University of Maryland professor spent more than two decades researching what he calls "the eternal connection between humans and dogs."
His conclusion: Dogs, or their ancestors, helped us become better people.
Just as Tyrone helps me.
I'm working again now. In fact, I now have two jobs. So I'm worried that Tyrone will be upset if that cuts into our walking time. Then, again, he may be having the same concerns about me.
"Just remember," Franklin said, "there's an animal on both ends of the leash."
Yet another sappy dog book
Rating:
Cherry-picked anthropomorphism abounds in this book. The author thinks he is objective enough to avoid romanticizing wolves, but he turns around and says they love each other, and he is sappy about other canine behavior too. His theory on brain size loss in human beings is absurd and much too simplistic. He all but ignores the importance of other domesticated animals such as goats, cattle, horses, pigs, and camels. He ignores the reasons people keep other pets besides dogs; he seems not to realize that cats are very popular pets in our "parlors", as are ferrets, parrots, rodents, and tropical fish. He is WAY too into dogs; he has blinders on.
He also appears to suffer from extremely low self esteem: he is ok with being the "omega", lower in rank than his wife and poodle. The dog obviously wears the pants in his family. Another case of a man acting like a putz when it comes to dogs.
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