The animal kingdom is full of insights into human nature. These new books give readers a fascinating glimpse of some of the connections.

Near and deer
Nature as nemesis is a foreign concept to anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (The Secret Life of Dogs), who embraces and even encourages the scourge of modern suburban gardeners in The Hidden Life of Deer: Lessons from the Natural World (Harper, $24.99, 256 pages, ISBN 9780061792106). One fall, Thomas noticed that acorns were thin on the ground around her New Hampshire farmhouse, so she sprinkled corn on the ground for the wild turkeys.

Then came the hungry deer. Thomas, who grew up with her scientist parents among the Kalahari people of Africa, started scattering pounds of corn each day, the better to attract, track and observe usually hidden deer behaviors. “I could do no more than the bears and whitetails do—keep looking and listening for more information,” Thomas writes of her curiosity about the deer. “You find questions you cannot answer, and mysteries you cannot solve.”

As she begins to identify each doe, buck and fawn and follows the herds from season to season, Thomas draws readers into her compassionate, insightful accounts of everyday courage on behalf of wildlife, including standing up to an armed neighbor to make sure an injured bear wasn’t shot dead (he later bends her backyard birdfeeder pole like a paper clip and casually empties the seed into his mouth, proof of his vitality). Her accounts of the treatment of whitetail deer that survive impacts with cars are heartbreaking, but this “tree-hugging grandmother” passes a hunting license course with a near perfect score at the age of 68 and then goes hunting with her neighbor in the name of conservation and research. “I didn’t learn how to hunt but I did learn how it feels to hunt,” she writes, “which is all I really wanted.” Anyone with an interest in wildlife will adore spending time with Thomas and her sensitive, inquisitive mind.

Amazing animal rescues
World-renowned ethologist and anthropologist Dr. Jane Goodall made her name studying and living among the chimpanzees of Tanzania. She later founded the Jane Goodall Institute, a nonprofit that encourages individuals to take “informed and compassionate action to improve the environment of all living things.” Horrified by the destruction of primate habitats, she left the field in the mid-1980s to raise awareness about conservation. Her new book, Hope for Animals and Their World: How Endangered Species Are Being Rescued from the Brink, co-written with Cincinnati Zoo director Thane Maynard, host of the NPR’s The 90-Second Naturalist, is a report on species once on the verge of extinction whose populations are now being revived.

Gathered firsthand by Goodall and colleagues in the field, and from scientific and historical record, these accounts detail the heartening yet life-threatening challenges of conservation work. From the graduate student who dyed the tufts on the heads of cotton-top tamarin monkeys to tell them apart while observing this endangered primate, to the 19th-century lighthouse cat that killed the last remaining wrens on Stephen’s Island, New Zealand, to the California condor chick reintroduced into the wild and then rushed into surgery after its young parents fed it trash instead of bone fragments, these stories could galvanize even the most cosseted animal lover to action. “It comes down to a conflict between concern for the individual and concern for the future of a species,” Goodall writes. “[But] I found that people got really excited about the idea of sharing the good news, shining a light on all the projects, large and small, that together are gradually healing some of the harm we have inflicted.”

Finding the wolf within
Did the dog and human evolve together, and did canines become so successful because they had access to the even bigger human brain? Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jon Franklin (Molecules of the Mind) uses research in brain science and anthropology, plus interviews with experts and primary experience with his own dog, to explore the relationship between ancient wolves, canines and humans in The Wolf in the Parlor: The Eternal Connection Between Humans and Dogs. “With respect to dogs,” Franklin writes, “the picture science had painted for us was woefully inadequate.” So he sets out on a long, smart and sometimes meandering research trip into the evolution of the wolf brain and its possible relationship to human and canine development.

Franklin tracks down the sexy and non-sexy research into canine evolution, and therefore, human evolution— from current research into what transformed humans 12,000 years ago, canine fossil material found in China, 150,000-year-old wolf skulls in an ancient cave and the lack of grant money to research dogs. (“I can’t get money for work on dogs,” one scientist laments. “I’m tired of struggling with it. Nobody cares about dogs.”) The story really gets interesting when Franklin gets a poodle puppy, Charlie, as a “marriage price” from his wife, then reluctantly observes the lengths to which humans go to “train” their companions, and how their efforts often say more about the humans than the dogs. He watches his wife prepare Charlie for competitive obedience trials (“Could dogs be a tool of one’s ambition?”) and goes to the nursing home where Charlie performs “songs” and realizes he can’t laugh with him, only at him, and that the dog knows the difference. As he muses on his dog as an “amplifier of nature,” Franklin leads dog lovers to ponder the critical role their own pets may play in shaping their daily lives.

Cat fancier
Millions of viewers fell in love with the story of Christian the lion on YouTube, wishing they were the ones getting that big cat hug. Kevin Richardson has lived that fantasy as a self-taught behaviorist and animal custodian at Kingdom of the White Lion in South Africa. He teams with writer Tony Park for a fascinating glimpse into the dangers and joys of working with lions, hyenas and other predators in Part of the Pride: My Life Among the Big Cats of Africa. Working as an exercise physiologist after college, Richardson met a rich man who had just bought a local lion park and encouraged him to visit with two little lion cubs, Tau and Napoleon. “Before I knew it,” Richardson writes, “I was responsible for an entire family of extreme creatures.” Without aspirations to become an animal wrangler or leeu boer (Afrikaans for lion farmer), the former zoology major instead developed relationships with these dangerous animals without a stick—the usual way of handling lions at the time—feeding them from his hand and following his own observations and instincts. Richardson still gets his fair share of lion “slap arounds” and tooclose encounters, which make for hair-raising reading. His respect for the big cats as he continues to learn and risk all makes his story endlessly fascinating.

The cooler weather of fall signals a time to get closer to friends and family—and the animals that add spice to our lives and teach valuable lessons along the way.

SMALL WONDERS

The power of a 25-pound beast to alter a life is made evident in You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness. Julie Klam, a former intern for “Late Night with David Letterman” and Emmy-nominated writer for VH1’s “Pop-Up Video,” sees her solitary single life turn upside down after she rescues a fugly Boston terrier named Otto, who comes along at just the right time to remedy Klam’s status as a commitment-phobe. “It made me feel good to see him content,” Klam writes. “I took care of him and he took care of me. Within six months of adopting him, I grew up.” Klam eventually marries the producer of her VH1 show, a marriage that results in an adorable daughter, Violet, and a parade of foster dogs to and from their tiny apartment after she decides to volunteer for a Boston terrier rescue group. These little one-act adventures in the sacrifices and rewards of dog guardianship have humanity, occasional tragedy and sadness, and plenty of hilarity as this compact family in an even tinier space attempts to save the neurotic, unwanted and abandoned, including an elderly dog that provides a miracle just when the family least expects it.

PUPPY POWER

Fans of the best-selling memoir Merle’s Door: Adventures from a Freethinking Dog will be ecstatic to hear that Ted Kerasote has another dog. Kerasote, a warm and winning writer, is an equally gifted photographer who traces his new puppy’s early development in Pukka: The Pup After Merle. Their action-packed and tender moments, narrated from Pukka’s point of view and accompanied by more than 200 color photos, provide a coda and healing for those who remember Kerasote’s journey with another special yellow dog. From Pukka in front of the wood-burning stove in Kerasote’s beautiful cabin in Kelly, Wyoming, to exploring Yosemite National Park, rafting on rapids (complete with doggie life jacket) and hiking to the top of Jackson Peak, readers can follow the growth of a tiny puppy into an adventurous adolescent lucky enough to romp past some stunning scenery with an owner who appreciates him as deeply as any dog longs to be.

“If you can manage to make the world small enough—say the size of a miniature poodle—it becomes the universe.”

HOPE & HEALING

Sages come in all sizes. A miniature black poodle named Bijou serves as her owners’ “Canine Zen Master” in What a Difference a Dog Makes: Big Lessons on Life, Love, and Healing from a Small Pooch. Springing from New York Times editor Dana Jennings’ popular blog post about how his beloved elderly dog Bijou helped him recover from cancer (and get his son through a concurrent health crisis), the book expands on the joy of dogs and the healing aspects of the “simple gift of their presence.” In touching and mischievous sections like “You Take the Dog Out, I Have Cancer” and “The Holiness of Dogs,” Jennings adds simple Zen-like truths “by” his guru Bijou at the end of each chapter to illustrate the emotional power, insight and many blessings that one animal can provide. “Strangely enough,” Jennings writes, “if you can manage to make the world small enough—say the size of a miniature poodle—it becomes the universe.”

OFF THE BEATEN PATH

Journalist John Zeaman creates a masterpiece of contemplation in Dog Walks Man: A Six-Legged Odyssey. After becoming the de facto dog walker in his household, Zeaman discovers that the daily routine with standard poodle Pete moves from being a grind to serving as an inspirational return to boyhood and its “fringe places” like woods, abandoned lots and railroad right-of-ways. Pete shows a “boundless enthusiasm for the outside world [that is] like the reincarnation of that juvenile self.” As they set out each day with “anthropological curiosity,” like two innocent and hopeful vagabonds lost in the “aimlessness of childhood wandering,” they slow down and create a “space where things could just happen.” Their adventures, familiar to all dog walkers—from nasty weather and squirrel chases to prying a used “adult entertainment” item from Pete’s jaws—become extraordinary through Zeaman’s eyes. His droll observations on dog-walking combine insight, solace and meditation, taking readers into the heart of a routine task, dusting the ordinary with the divine. “At night, Pete and I would escape the sometimes suffocating sweetness of family life—the pajamas and stories, the smell of toothpaste and sheets, the damp goodnight kisses and prolonged hugs,” he writes. “We’d slip out into the silky night like a pair of teenage boys with high hopes for a Saturday night.”

They’re so much more than man’s best friend. These days, dogs occupy privileged places in our hearts and homes, improving us as humans and making our lives more purposeful. As the books here show, the love of a good canine can cure almost any ailment. 

DIARY OF A DOG LOVER
When Jill Abramson, executive editor of The New York Times, adopted a golden retriever puppy named Scout, she blogged about her canine-related experiences on the paper’s website. Her posts proved surprisingly popular, prompting responses from readers around the country. We’ve got good news for Abramson’s followers: Her beloved blog has inspired a full-blown book, The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout. 

In this wonderfully engaging narrative, Abramson documents the ups and downs of Scout’s first year. It’s a time of adjustment, as Abramson and her husband, Henry, struggle with a bad case of the empty nest blues made worse by the loss of their previous dog. Scout fills these voids, and then some, but she comes with a catch—a boisterous nature that suits Abramson’s country house in Connecticut but poses problems in her New York City loft. Exasperated by the challenges of raising a dog in an urban setting and by Scout’s bad habits (you name it, this puppy’s done it: chewing shoes, barking at mealtimes, relieving herself indoors), Abramson turns to behaviorists for help. The story of how she molds Scout into a compliant, city-dwelling creature will give hope to anyone who owns a problematic pooch. Along with humorous anecdotes and can’t-be-beat memories, Abramson offers sound counsel on breeding, adoption and diet, making this an invaluable guidebook as well as a sweet valentine to a lovable canine.

INTO THE WILD
As the man behind the Newbury, Massachusetts, newspaper The Undertoad, Tom Ryan played the role of roving reporter for a decade. In 2007, ready for a change, he sold the publication and relocated to the White Mountains of New Hampshire with his miniature schnauzer pal, Atticus M. Finch. The move opened up new vistas for the pair—both literally and figuratively—inspiring the incredible adventures that Ryan recounts with flair in Following Atticus: Forty-Eight High Peaks, One Little Dog, and an Extraordinary Friendship. 

Stirred by the majestic terrain of his new home and moved by the death of a close friend from cancer, Ryan forms a plan to raise money to fight the disease: With Atticus by his side (accoutered in booties and fleece-lined bodysuit), he tackles the intimidating peaks of the White Mountain Range, climbing all 48 of them twice as a charity fundraiser. Up in the mountains, the two contend with frigid temperatures, snow and wind, and there are times when the weather makes progress impossible. It’s at these moments that Ryan’s affection for his pint-sized companion, who possesses courage and pluck of epic proportions, is most endearingly apparent. Not long after their return from the peaks, Atticus experiences serious health problems. What transpires for him and for Ryan on their home turf is just as extraordinary as their mountain journey. Following Atticus is an intriguing story of growth, possibility and the one-of-a-kind camaraderie that exists between man and dog.

SALVATION WITH A FURRY FACE
Julie Klam has had lots of experience in the dog department. Her best-selling memoir, You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness (2010), was a delightful account of the way her under-populated personal life was enriched by a dog named Otto and grew to include a husband, daughter and small brood of adopted Boston terriers. Klam’s latest release, Love at First Bark: How Saving a Dog Can Sometimes Help You Save Yourself, exhibits the same humor and narrative panache that made her last book so appealing. 

With her wry, honest style in full swing, Klam shares personal tales of dog rescue and rehab that read, at times, like adventure stories. Traveling to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Klam finds herself in a swamp assisting with the retrieval of a feral puppy who has a jar jammed on his head. A Manhattan rescue named Morris—a burly pit bull—helps resuscitate the author’s fragile marriage. Another adoptee, a Boston terrier called Clementine, has a major (and messy) incontinence problem and a spirit so cheery that Klam can’t help but be inspired by her. At bottom, these stories share a single sentiment—that pets in general (and dogs in particular) have a rejuvenating effect on the human spirit. This is a lovely little book that will strike a chord with just about any breed of animal lover.

HOME IS WHERE THE DOG IS
Globetrotting photographer Art Wolfe has aimed his lens at just about every kind of animal imaginable—canines included, of course. In fact, photographing dogs and the people who own them has been a pet (pardon the pun) project of Wolfe’s since 1984, when he snapped images of kids and their four-legged friends while on assignment in Tibet. Wolfe’s favorite dog-and-owner shots are showcased in the breathtaking new book Dogs Make Us Human: A Global Family Album. Remarkable for its reach and diversity, this international gallery features poodles and Pomeranians, purebreds and mutts, dogs that hunt and dogs that defend—canines of every conceivable breed and demeanor. Ditto the owners. 

Along with captivating images from every continent, this unique collection contains text by best-selling author Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, who examines the incomparable bond between man and dog. “Our relationship with dogs is the single most important symbiotic relationship between humans and another species on the planet,” he says. Wolfe’s photos support this statement. Standout images include a Yorkie in Tokyo perched on the seat of a moped, and a chihuahua in Seattle whose sunglasses and leather cap parallel its owner’s outfit—or lack thereof. If you’re trying to convert a cat lover, this collection should do the trick.

P.S. FROM A SPECIAL PET 
With Letters from Angel, Martin P. Levin offers a touching tribute to a much-missed pooch. After he was forced to put Angel, his golden retriever, to sleep, Levin decided to share her story with the world, producing this slender but substantial book. Told from Angel’s perspective in a series of letters, the narrative provides a dog’s-eye view of daily existence that’s utterly enchanting. Angel is frightened of fireworks, finds cabdrivers unmannerly and adores Mrs. Levin’s home-cooked lamb chops. She uses the letters to share memories—not all of them happy—of her pre-Levin life. Her take on humans and the world they inhabit is irresistible. Illustrated with delightful black-and-white line drawings, this is a book you can breeze through in a single sitting, but it’s better savored slowly. 

If you're looking for a holiday gift for an animal aficionado, look no further than these six new books, which celebrate (and justify!) our fascination with and devotion to our furry friends. From photography-laden treats to amazing true stories to beautiful poetry, these cat-and-dog tales will be well-received, indeed.

GRACEFUL AND GORGEOUS
The Elegance of the Cat: An Illustrated History will incite ooh-ing and ahh-ing among cat-lovers and photographers alike. But this large-format beauty isn't just about pretty kitties—it's also a cat-historian's (catstorian's?) delight. Author Tamsin Pickeral offers a thoughtful examination of the role of the cat through the centuries, plus detailed information on 50 breeds. Pickeral notes that, in the Middle Ages, cats were persecuted due to a rise in Christianity and a mistrust of cats' link to polytheism and magic. This cat-hatred had stunning big-picture consequences: "[T]he mass slaughter of cats across Europe during the Middle Ages neatly coincided with the sweeping devastation of the Black Death," which was spread via flea-infested rats—whose numbers swelled in the absence of their chief predators.

Felines fared better in subsequent eras and are, of course, the object of much affection today, whether in homes worldwide, "Garfield" comic strips, or any number of videos online. Then there are the cat shows, which became popular in the late 1800s. The two world wars were a fallow time for cat-breeding, Pickeral reports, but enthusiasm redoubled after WWII and continues apace. Cat-breeders and readers seeking a purebred cat will find The Elegance of the Cat a valuable tool, thanks to descriptions of 50-plus breeds' appearance, personality and origins—plus Astrid Harrisson's stunning photos of cats in nature, at play, or perhaps practicing their cat-show poses.

A FELINE OMNIBUS
In the cat-book universe, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats surely is high on the Most Wanted list: Its 300-plus pages are a feline-appreciation wonderland of fiction, poetry, essays, cartoons and covers culled from the magazine's nearly nine decades in print—and its contributors' seemingly endless willingness to ponder, and attempt to capture, that which makes cats so . . . cat-like. According to the magazine's film critic, Anthony Lane, it's an ever-entertaining and, often, ultimately fruitless pursuit. Lane writes in the foreword, when musing on why there are no cats in the New Yorker offices, "[Y]ou cannot fact-check a cat. . . . In contrast to the magazine, and to this capacious book, cats are unreadable, and happy to remain so. Unlike writers, and related pests, they cannot be controlled." That's thoroughly celebrated here, in four sections (Fat Cats, Alley Cats, Cat Fanciers, Curious Cats) and a sizable amalgam of words and pictures—all reflecting the kaleidoscope of emotions and beliefs cats can provoke, from fascination to frustration, curiosity to an overwhelming urge to cuddle.

Writers including James Thurber, Jamaica Kincaid, E.B. White and Margaret Atwood, plus numerous cartoon and cover artists (cover-cats had their heyday in the 1970s, it seems), pay homage to cats in their many guises. The Big New Yorker Book of Cats is thought-provoking, fun, and great to look at — plus, it's the perfect size to comfortably host a sprawling cat (or a couple of kittens).

OH, GO AWAY ALREADY
Grumpy Cat probably doesn't like Grumpy Cat: A Grumpy Book. The first-time author has a career many would envy. This year alone, she's been on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, the cover of New York magazine, TV shows like "Good Morning America" and "CBS Evening News," and made an appearance at SXSW. Not bad for a one-and-a-half-year-old, but Grumpy Cat isn't just any toddler. She's a cat who's also an Internet meme, thanks to her perma-frown, which her owners say is due to feline dwarfism. Grumpy Cat has 1.9 million Facebook likes and a lot to say, and her writerly debut lays it out like so: "I dream of a world in which everyone sulks in their own corner, occasionally emerging to judge one another and feel disgust for everything around them." Grumpy Cat explains why she hates dogs, shares her arrest record and creates a gift guide "for the person who doesn't deserve anything," including such choices as an "ergonomic litter box" (unmade bed) and "bouncing ball" (fragile vase). There are also plenty of photos: family pictures, meme-ified shots, and some un-skillfully Photoshopped ones—though it must be said, using a paw to manipulate a computer-mouse is nothing like handling a real mouse, so rough edges are to be expected.

Reading Grumpy Cat in one sitting, while easy to do, might be a bit much for cheerier sorts: The negativity, while often visually adorable, is relentless and may result in a bad mood, which . . . wait a minute. It works! She's a grumpy genius.

AMAZING CANINES
Rebecca Ascher-Walsh's author photo for Devoted: 38 Extraordinary Tales of Love, Loyalty, and Life with Dogs is notable not only because it's adorable, but because the image of her—smiling broadly, eyes squeezed shut as the pit bull she's holding gives her a big, wet kiss—is the embodiment of her book: the pit bull is a dog she helped get adopted. Presumably Ascher-Walsh, an animal activist, didn't adopt the dog herself because she's already got a couple of her own (photo, page 6), but there's seemingly no limit to her affection for animals, especially the ones she's profiled here. Each story is accompanied by photos, and dog-centric facts are sprinkled throughout. For example, "Dogs can distinguish smells 1,000 to 10,000 times better than a human"—fascinating on its own, and even more so when that ability is central to the story of Effie, who sniffed out her owner's cancer. Then there's Shana, who saved her owners during a snowstorm (she dug a tunnel and dragged them to safety), and Rose, who works as a courthouse dog (she comforts children testifying about traumatic events).

Devoted is filled with fascinating true stories of canine heroism, dare-devilry (Hooch and his owner scuba-dive), and always, love.

Dogs let it all hang out in the spectacular stop-action photography of Carli Davidson's Shake.

DOGS, INTERRUPTED
Shake is a full-color compendium of full-on adorableness, featuring all sorts of dogs in mid-shake. Some squint as if caught in a wind tunnel, others maintain eye contact while their twisting jowls release astounding arcs of drool, and still others transform from merely poofy to fantastically fluffy. In 2010, photographer Carli Davidson began taking pictures of rescue dogs mid-shake. She posted the shots on Facebook, they went viral in 2011, and a book was born: 61 dogs, a stark black background, and glorious side-by-side photos. Davidson notes in her introduction that she borrowed the idea of photographing an animal mid-motion from Eadweard Muybridge, who photographed horses in 1878. She adds that the project "has given me insight into the universality of how much we love our pets, and how excited we are to see our heroes in a new way."

Davidson's high-speed photography technique, plus her dog-wrangling ability, make for a fun new way to look at dogs—and an inevitable yearning to hug a hound, starting with the ones in this book. Those faces 

PRAISE AND JOY
Poet Mary Oliver has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and her 2012 collection, A Thousand Mornings, was a New York Times bestseller. Oliver has another hit on her hands with Dog Songs: Poems, in which we learn that the talented poet is just like the rest of us in at least one way: She loves her dogs—the ones she grew up with, the ones who've departed this earth, the ones she shares time with today. In this book of poems (plus one poetic essay), Oliver honors and reflects on the human-canine connection through her experiences with Percy, Ben, Bear, Henry and Ricky, the winsome Havanese with whom Oliver shares her author photo. Finely done line-drawings of Oliver's dogs add to the warmth of the Dog Songs experience, which is a lovely gift for dog-lovers, or anyone who smiles at lines like these:

Running here running there, excited,
hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins

until the white snow is written upon
in large, exuberant letters,
a long sentence, expressing
the pleasure of the body in this world.

"Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased," Oliver writes, and the reader responds simply, "Of course."