Animal Madness
How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves
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4.2 • 11 Ratings
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- $1.99
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
**“Science Friday” Summer Reading Pick**
**Discover magazine Top 5 Summer Reads**
**People magazine Best Summer Reads**
“A lovely, big-hearted book…brimming with compassion and the tales of the many, many humans who devote their days to making animals well” (The New York Times).
Have you ever wondered if your dog might be a bit depressed? How about heartbroken or homesick? Animal Madness takes these questions seriously, exploring the topic of mental health and recovery in the animal kingdom and turning up lessons that Publishers Weekly calls “Illuminating…Braitman’s delightful balance of humor and poignancy brings each case of life….[Animal Madness’s] continuous dose of hope should prove medicinal for humans and animals alike.”
Susan Orlean calls Animal Madness “a marvelous, smart, eloquent book—as much about human emotion as it is about animals and their inner lives.” It is “a gem…that can teach us much about the wildness of our own minds” (Psychology Today).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this illuminating contribution to the burgeoning field of animal studies, senior TED fellow Braitman suggests that the key to understanding mental illness might lie in our pets. Humans, she reveals, are not the only ones who experience emotional turbulence or mental problems that break daily routine. Bears can endure heartbreak, elephants can form intense social attachments, and gorillas can die from homesickness. Few species escape her discussion. Braitman's delightful balance of humor and poignancy brings each case to life as she draws on her own experience, research, and the theories of Darwin, Descartes, and others. We have always described animal behavior using human terminology, and analyzing these accounts in historical context leads to revelations about the human species and larger issues of language and communication. Yet emotion is in part contingent upon the ability to express it, so the varied capacities for self-awareness and language within the animal world are perhaps the only possible loopholes to Braitman's logic. But analytical scrutiny would not be the way to approach this book, whose continuous dose of hope should prove medicinal for humans and animals alike.
