Veterinary Care and Animal Advocacy
Dr. Hynes Recommends The Following Books
Richard O'Barry with Keith Coulbourn
People who have faced death often speak of their lives flashing before their lives. Something much different happened to dolphin trainer Richard O'Barry when one of the dolphins that played Flipper on television died of stress in his arms. He realized that most of his career as an animal trainer had been a mistake and that dolphins have as much right to freedom as humans. He vowed not to rest until he freed every last dolphin that could be returned to the wild successfully.
This is a true story that will move not only animal lovers but everyone who loves a well-told tale. Ric O'Barry had everything -- money, flashy cars, pretty women -- but it wasn't enough to keep his conscience at bay. He began to understand that dolphins were easy to train because of their great intelligence, not his great talent, and keeping them in captivity was cruel and morally wrong. While research and entertainment are important to human life, they are not worth the cost to these beautiful and gentle animals.
O'Barry was arrested trying to free a dolphin, but that didn't stop him, and he now devotes his life to untraining dolphins and returning them to their natural habitats. Once the pride of the billion-dollar dolphin captivity industry, he has since become its nemesis.
"An engaging memoir...a refreshing down-to-earth look at men [and] dolphins."
- Kirkus
by Dan Matthews
Committed is a bold, offbeat, globe-trotting memoir that shows how the most ridiculed punching bag in high school became an internationally renowned crusader for the most downtrodden individuals of all -- animals. This irresistibly entertaining book recounts the random incidents and soul-searching that inspired a reluctant party boy to devote his life to a cause, without ever abandoning his sense of mischief and fun.
"Funny, frank, and daring."
- Bill Maher
by J.M. Ledgard
In April 1975, forty-seven giraffes were executed in a zoo in a small Czechoslovakian town. There are no records of the event. This strange and beautiful novel tells their story from the moment of their capture in Africa, to the night when they are secretly shot one by one.
"Inspired ... a literary descendant of T. S. Eliot's Wasteland."
- Chicago Tribune
by Daniel Quinn
The narrator of this extraordinary tale is a man in search for truth. He answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned office with a full-grown gorilla who is nibbling delicately on a slender branch. "You are the teacher?" he asks incredulously. "I am the teacher," the gorilla replies.
Ishmael is a creature of immense wisdom and he has a story to tell, one that no other human being has ever heard. It is a story that extends backward and forward over the lifespan of the earth from the birth of time to a future there is still time save. Like all great teachers, Ishmael refuses to make the lesson easy; he demands the final illumination to come from within ourselves. Is it man's destiny to rule the world? Or is it a higher destiny possible for him -- one more wonderful than he has ever imagined?
"From now on I will divide the books I have read into two categories -- the ones I read before Ishmael and those read after."
- Jim Britell, Whole Earth Review
by Gerard Donovan
Julius Winsome lives in a cabin in the hunting heartland of the Maine woods, with only his books and his dog for company. That is until the morning he finds that his dog has been shot dead, and not by accident.
"The title character of this unsettling novel lives alone in the deep woods of Maine, home to men 'who cannot live anywhere else.' Fifty-one and never married, Julius remains in the remote cabin where he grew up, with only the company of his dog, Hobbes, and thousands of books left him by his father. When Hobbes is shot at close range by a deer hunter, inchoate rage drives Julius out of his isolation to track down the killer. In past novels, Donovan has resorted to literary effects to make points about man’s capacity for violence; here he settles for the clean punch of language, which he delivers with devastating force. In prose laced with hard-edged Shakespeareanisms -- 'amort,' 'blood-boltered,' 'cullion' -- he pursues the nature of human cruelty, the reason that 'some men must create pain in others to feel less of it themselves.'"
- The New Yorker
Linda Faillace
In the mid-1990s Linda and Larry Faillace had a dream: they wanted to breed sheep and make cheese on their Vermont farm. They did the research, worked hard, followed the rules, and, after years of preparation and patience, built a successful, entrepreneurial business.
But just like that, their dream turned into a nightmare. The U.S. Department of Agriculture told them that the sheep they imported from Europe (with the USDA's seal of approval) carried a disease similar to the dreaded BSE or "mad cow disease." After months of surveillance -- which included USDA agents spying from nearby mountaintops and comically hiding behind bushes -- armed federal agents seized their flock. The animals were destroyed, the Faillace's lives turned upside down, all so that the USDA could show the U.S. meat industries that they were protecting America from mad cow disease -- and by extension, easing fears among an increasingly wary population of meat-eaters.
Mad Sheep is the account of one family’s struggle against a bullying and corrupt government agency that long ago abandoned the family farmer to serve the needs of corporate agriculture and the industrialization of our food supply. Similar to the national best-selling book, A Civil Action, readers will cheer on this courageous family in its fight for justice in the face of politics as usual and the implacable bureaucracy of the farm industry in Washington, DC.
"Mad Sheep is one of those books that makes going to sleep at a decent hour unthinkable."
- ACRES USA
Nicolette Hahn Niman
Sometimes the simplest lessons take the longest to sink in. In the case of raising livestock for consumption, the lesson is this: what's good for the animals is good for those who consume them. In Righteous Porkchop, Hahn Niman, an attorney, joins Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Waterkeepers to take on the factory farming of hogs. At issue is not only the cruelty meted out to the pigs but also the devastation industrial hog operations cause to the environment. No less important are the health issues that ensue when people eat meat contaminated with the drugs required to keep the animals alive in the deplorable conditions in which they're raised.
Huge conglomerates with all the influence money can buy have long been free to destroy entire communities, creating so much untreated sewage runoff that fishermen angling in nearby rivers contract the same diseases as the last of the dying fish. Real farmers understand the importance of sustainability, of raising animals without resorting to inhumanity. The challenge faced by free-range operations is the difficult competition they confront when it comes to price and distribution.
An East Coast vegetarian who fell in love with West Coast cattle rancher Bill Niman, Hahn Niman is a passionate advocate for traditional, sustainable farming, and her book is a must-read -- a clear eyed and fascinating exploration of the way forward. Which is, in a word, backward.
"Righteous Porkchop is a compelling call for overhauling the way we produce food from one of the nation's most credible advocates. It's also a great read. I highly recommend it."
- Matthew Scully, author of Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy
by Gail A. Eisnitz
Slaughterhouse is the first book of its kind to explore the impact that unprecedented changes in the meatpacking industry over the last twenty-five years-particularly industry consolidation, increased line speeds, and deregulation-have had on workers, animals, and consumers. It is also the first time ever that workers have spoken publicly about what's really taking place behind the closed doors of America's slaughterhouses.
by Karen Dawn
In Thanking the Monkey, Karen Dawn covers pets, fur, fashion, food, animal testing, activism, and more. But as the title playfully suggests, this isn't like any previous animal rights book. Thanking the Monkey is light on lectures meant to make you feel guilty if you're not a leather-eschewing vegan. It lets you have fun as you learn about Paul McCartney's love of lambs and why Prince won't wear wool.
This fun primer for a smart and socially committed generation delivers some serious surprises in the form of facts and figures about the treatment of animals. Yes, it will shock you with tales of primates still used in animal testing on nicotine or killed for oven cleaner. But it will also let you lighten up and laugh a little as we work out how to do a better job of
thanking the monkey.
"Thanking the Monkey is fun and it will give people the information they wish they had all their lives. It is going to change the world."
- Rory Freedman
by Garth Stein
A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life . . . as only a dog could tell it.
"THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN takes you on an unforgettable journey through another kind of mind, through the eyes -- and nose -- of a dog. I found it fascinating."
- Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
The best-selling author of When Elephants Weep explores our relationship with the animals we call food.
In this revelatory work, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson shows how food affects our moral selves, our health, and the environment. It raises questions to make us conscious of the decisions behind every bite we take: What effect does eating animals have on our land, waters, even global warming? What are the results of farming practices—debeaking chickens and separating calves from their mothers—on animals and humans? How does the health of animals affect the health of our planet and our bodies? And uniquely, as a psychoanalyst, Masson investigates how denial keeps us from recognizing the animal at the end of our fork—think pig, not bacon—and each food and those that are forbidden. The Face on intellectual, psychological, and emotional expertise over the last twenty years into the pivotal book of the food revolution.
"Masson's newest volume marshals the historic arguments against eating meat and adds to them contemporary concerns about the environment. He recounts the amount of energy that goes into the production of meat and poultry, and he finds even the consumption of milk objectionable on the basis of its nutritional shortcomings and its inefficient use of natural resources. Lest the reader believe that fish consumption is morally acceptable, Masson presents arguments that fish are as sentient as any other animals. He waxes rhapsodic over all manner of fruits and vegetables but stops short of advocating the raw-food diet now being advocated by the most radical vegans. Masson finds the spread of grocery chains such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe's a heartening sign. An extensive bibliography and a long list of Web sites that deal with vegetarian and vegan issues are particularly helpful."
- Mark Knoblauch
Marc Caro
Veteran Chicago Tribune entertainment reporter Caro expands on his front-page story about a 2005 flap over foie gras with a wide-ranging investigation into the ethical debate surrounding the human consumption of fattened duck liver. Drawing on conflicts in Chicago, Philadelphia and California over whether force-feeding birds should be legislated as torture or standard agricultural practice, Caro presents various positions from duck farmers, chefs and animal rights activists. His chatty arguments between industry players deliver without becoming unnecessarily complicated or resorting to the oversimplification of surveys and superficial media reports. Caro offers descriptions of a vegan activist headquarters, a video depicting a rat burrowing into an injured duck, and traditional farm operations in France. While he pursues his source's agendas with due diligence, he appears reluctant to side completely with gourmands despite describing presumably happy ducks, mouthwatering foie gras meals and even eating a raw duck liver. While he tends to focus on the colorful, entertaining aspects of the food's history and science, Caro's selection of pointed quotes from duck liver lovers and foie gras foes presents an in-depth take on this ongoing food fight.
"…an engaging, funny writer, makes a palatable case for this luxury as an entry point into today's strangely high-stakes food culture…The book is part business story, part objective history and part profile of activists, chefs, farmers and politicians. If you set aside some gratuitous passages, fatty duck liver turns out to make a surprisingly interesting story."
- Blake Wilson, New York Times
by Sara Gruen
As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell.
A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It was there that he met Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the great gray hope for
this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and, ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.
"Circuses showcase human beings at their silliest and most sublime, and many unlikely literary figures have been drawn to their glitzy pageantry, soaring pretensions and metaphorical potential (Marianne Moore leaps to mind). Unsurprisingly, writers seem liberated by imagining a spectacle
where no comparison ever seems inflated, no development impossible. For better and for worse, Gruen has fallen under the spell. With a showman's expert timing, she saves a terrific revelation for the final pages, transforming a glimpse of Americana into an enchanting escapist fairy tale."
- Elizabeth Judd, The New York Times
Dr. Hynes Suggests:
Essential DVDs
The Urban Elephant
They have a history of captivity that stretches over 200 years. They participate with humans in (read more...)
Essential Books
Giraffe
In April 1975, forty-seven giraffes were executed in a zoo in a small Czechoslovakian (read more...)
