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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
An examination of the inner lives of animals, arguing that they possess an emotional sensibility not unlike that of humans.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This iconoclastic best seller throws down the gauntlet to the scientific community when it asserts what most pet owners assume: that animals fear, hope, love, and make friends much like humans. Further, it raises the possibility of animal spirituality. Do animals have souls? If we eliminate the distinctions between humans and beasts, can we justify scientific research on animals or allow meat in our diets? Psychoanalyst Masson and science writer McCarthy courageously accuse the scientific community of double standards and a fear of anthropomorphism. Nonetheless, the authors' work depends upon an analysis of words such as "instinct" and "drive" and upon anecdotal evidence. It is stylistically dull, the authors tend to ramble, and reader Richard Davidson narrates phlegmatically. High public interest may justify purchase, but most libraries should stick with the print version.?James Dudley, Copiague, N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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First Sentence
Somewhere in India, a blind river dolphin seeks her companion. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
Somewhere in India, a blind river dolphin seeks her companion. Read the first page
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Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Animals have emotions and souls, but this book was terrible!,
By "songbear" (Ashburn, VA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals (Paperback)
I love animals. Anyone who has ever lived with a dog, cat, horse, or any other species know animals have emotions. Some humans just don't have the time or the heart to recognize them and respond to them. This book deserved to be so much better than it actually was. Great idea executed poorly. "When Elephants Weep" ended up being too much of an intellectual discussion about what is wrong with the human race and is written from a sophomoric slant enough to bore all but the most devout pop psychology buff to complete and utter insanity. In the first two chapters, authors Susan McCarthy and Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson just rail on unfeeling humans (there is actually a chapter entitled "Unfeeling Brutes") and all we get for over 40 pages is a diatribe against the scientific community. The author even goes so far to discuss the deficiencies in Freudian psychology in the area of human child sexual abuse, but never fully explains why this is relevant to the topic of the book.Opinions, opinions, and more opinions. I kept waiting for even moderately detailed, heartwarming accounts of animal emotions and all I got were short burst of dry, clinical accounts of various animals followed by paragraphs and paragraphs of human psychology. The main author Masson has a PhD in Sanskrit. Maybe he should stick to something he knows about, because he doesn't demonstrate that he knows anything about emotion in this book - animal or otherwise. This book is overwrought, poorly written, not well thought out, disorganized, doesn't make a good argument for animal emotions (which deserves one), and doesn't do anything to seriously convince the scientific community why they should study this subject more closely. Books like this actually hurt the cause more than they promote it. I just can't believe he got this published. I don't care what the critics say, or the fact that this was a New York Times best seller. Don't waste your money on this book. The authors come off like raving lunatics, making a respectable topic for research and further study look like it belongs on the magazine rack with the tabloids. I have learned more about being human from my dog than I have ever learned from another human being. Animals have emotions - and I believe they have souls. Most humans know that by instinct and we'll have to rely on instinct until better written books and thorough research on this subject are published.
4.0 out of 5 stars
When Elephants Weep, We All Should...,
By Skinartia (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals (Paperback)
This is a very interesting book both as a lay person and a vegan/animal rights supporter. There were a couple of points in it that I thought were ridiculous (I can't give any specific example off the top of my head), and some of it read too much like a psychological text book instead of being directed at lay people which was a bit distracting. Overall, I highly recommend this book as more people need to realize that animals are indeed feeling creatures with emotions in their own rights and not cold, unfeeling "things" to be used and abused by us.
4.0 out of 5 stars
a thoughtful book on a difficult subject,
By
This review is from: When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals (Paperback)
In the scientific community, "anthropomorphism" (assigning human qualities to inanimate ojects or animals) is villified to an astonishing degree. Masson has bravely written a book which contains stories of animals interacting with members of their own species and also with humans, stories that definitely would indicate emotion to any sensible person. Unfortunately, emotion in animals cannot be proven, because they cannot talk (with the notable exception of Koko the signing gorilla and Alex the parrot). And because animals-as-objects are important to research and industry, this is a subject that no one wants to touch. Although at times the writing in the book is somewhat bland, I recommend it and am grateful to people like Masson, Jane Goodall, and Marc Bekoff who are not afraid to bring this issue to the forefront.
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