Reviews

How the Dog Became the Dog by Mark Derr

sailaway's review against another edition

1.0

There was a lot of new information scattered throughout this book, but the lack of editing and the unorganized nature of the text made it nearly unreadable. I almost finished this book, but I was so annoyed about said shortcomings, that I couldn't. Also, more maps or illustrations would have been useful, especially when the author laid out his theories about how dogs and humans wandered the Earth.

geeisforgrace's review against another edition

2.0

This book was a little repetitive and I couldn't really narrow down a main take-home point. I was hoping for some historical and scientific information on the transition from wolf-->dog. While this book WAS full of interesting historical information regarding Neolithic peoples & wolves, it was hard to figure out exactly what the author was trying to argue. Altogether, it could be that there is still so much we don't know, so perhaps that is why it was hard to pull together into a text.

The book has useful information regarding species of wolves and how their lines helped shape the modern dog. Overall, hard to find an actual "point" and hard to articulate what I learned from it. The book tried really hard, but the writing was mediocre. The author was pretty repetitive and there are some glaring cases of poor editing. Not a bad read, but not quite as in-depth as I was hoping for. Still learned quite a bit.

raoionna's review against another edition

2.0

Popular scientific non-fiction about the history of the dog, but wasn't as well-written as I had hoped. The author's snarkiness really bugged me.