In his introduction to Dog Culture, editor Ken Foster reveals, "The last thing I wanted was a collection of otherwise intelligent people droning on and on about their own dogs. And yet it became quickly apparent that this was nearly impossible to avoid - after all, what better example of love or disobedience is there, what specimen has been more studied, than one's own dog? Like the best writing on anything, however, each of these pieces is both about a specific dog and about all dogs, and, most importantly, about something bigger and more essential than dogs themselves: Life, and how we choose to live it."

The narratives in this collection are about the power of a dog's personality in shaping the way we see and live our own lives. Here are bestselling authors Nicholas Dawidoff, on needing obedience school as much as his dog, and Chuck Palahniuk, on the otherworldly job of rescue dogs. Rene Steinke describes the shameful gluttony of her boyfriend's dog, Pearl Abraham writes of sneaking a dog into her life in defiance of the Chassidic community in which she was raised, and Chris Offutt reminisces about the Kentucky dog of his childhood, locked out of the house, injured with buckshot, but still deeply loved. Elissa Schappell gives us the other side of the coin in her hilarious treatise against dogs. She's as funny as she is wrong.

With Ken Foster's black-and-white images, this book will surprise, entrance, and ultimately make even the most skeptical dog lover see the world in a new way.

"A wonderful book to both look at and read, best done while a warm and well-fed canine companion rests beside you."--smallspiralnotebook.com