Dog Culture: Writers on the Character of Canines

By Ken Foster

Book Overview

"Intelligent and witty . . . the writers clearly love dogs." -Dog World

"A worthwhile treat." -Dog Fancy

"Wonderful writing about the emotional geography between dogs and people." -Jon Katz
DOG CULTURE showcases celebrated contemporary writers and the dogs in their lives. Here are best-selling authors Nicholas Dawidoff, on needing obedience school as much as his dog, and Chuck Palahniuk, on the otherworldly job of rescue dogs. Rene Steinke describes the shameful gluttony of her boyfriend's dog; Pearl Abraham writes of sneaking a dog into her life in defiance of the Chassidic community in which she was raised; and Chris Offutt reminisces about the Kentucky dog of his childhood, locked out of the house, injured with buckshot, but still deeply loved. Elissa Schappell gives us the other side of the coin in her hilarious treatise against dogs.

Like the best writing on anything, each of these pieces are both about specific dogs and about all dogs, and, most importantly, about something bigger and more essential than dogs themselves: life, and how we choose to live it. With black-and-white images of the inscrutable canines that inhabit our landscape, this book will surprise and entrance, and make even the most skeptical dog observer see the world in a new way.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1592285384
• ISBN13: 9781592285389
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.7" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Awesome read for the dog lover!

Fantastic read! I couldn't put it down. Do yourself a favor and read everything with Ken Foster's name on it!

For the dogs

Dog Culture has a little of everything for the dog lover. Its funny at times, sad, and up lifting. This book is a collection of stories/essays about people and their relationship to dogs. Ken Fosters' story is probably the best one in the book. But this book also contains a Chuck Palahniuk (Author of Fight Club and Choke)essay about rescue dogs which is also very good. There were about two or three stories that just didn't seem to fit here, but all in all, collectively this is a very good read.