Entertaining and informative, Pets in America is a portrait of Americans' relationships with the cats, dogs, birds, fishes, rodents, and other animals we call our own. More than 60 percent of U.S. households have pets, and America grows more pet-friendly every day. But as Katherine Grier demonstrates, the ways we talk about and treat our pets — as companions, as children, and as objects of beauty, status, or pleasure — have their origins long ago.

Grier begins with a natural history of animals as pets, then discusses the changing role of pets in family life, new standards of animal welfare, the problems presented by borderline cases such as livestock pets, and the marketing of both animals and pet products. She focuses particularly on the period between 1840 and 1940, when the emotional, behavioral, and commercial characteristics of contemporary pet keeping were established. The story is peppered with the warmth and humor of anecdotes from period diaries, letters, catalogs, and newspapers.

Filled with illustrations reflecting the whimsy, the devotion, and the commerce that have shaped centuries of American pet keeping, Pets in America ultimately shows how the history of pets has evolved alongside changing ideas about human nature, child development, and community life.

This book accompanies a museum exhibit, "Pets in America," which opens at the McKissick Museum in Columbia, South Carolina, in December 2005 and will travel to five other cities from May 2006 through May 2008.

"In an encyclopedic history, Grier describes the changing cultural sensibilities that have defined the experience of American pet owners from colonial times to the present. Grier, an expert on material culture at the Winterthur Museum (one of several museums that will display a traveling exhibition of the same title), draws on diaries, magazines, advice books, illustrations and photographs for this serious book reflecting the author's interest in the symbolic and metaphorical role pets play in our culture. Grier's definition of 'pet' is broad and includes domestic animals like urban horses as well as chickens and pigs, which were routinely raised by children on farms as quasi-pets. Although she is primarily interested in human-animal relationships, Grier doesn't neglect the developing commercial multibillion-dollar pet industry (Ralston Purina, Grier relates, began as a livestock feed company, adding dog food only in 1926). Scholarly, thorough, informative and animal friendly as the book is, Grier would have made many readers even happier had she occasionally eschewed seriousness in favor of the rich satirical grounds the excesses of pet-ownership provide. B&w photos." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"An encyclopedic history.... Scholarly, thorough, informative and animal friendly." Publishers Weekly

"Witty, richly illustrated, and entertaining."

Joy Kasson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

In this portrait of Americans' relationships with the cats, dogs, birds, fishes, rodents, and other animals we call our own, Grier shows how the history of pets has evolved alongside changing ideas about human nature, child development, and community life. She focuses particularly on the period between 1840 and 1940, when the emotional, behavioral, and commercial characteristics of contemporary pet keeping were established. Includes 100 illustrations.

Katherine C. Grier is professor of material culture studies, Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library and the University of Delaware. She lives in Wilmington, Delaware, and Onancock, Virginia, with her husband, two cats, and two dogs.