Synopses & Reviews
Fascinated by chickens? You are in good company. Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mark Twain are just a few of the great names who have written about the mysteries of roosters, hens, chicks, and eggs.
In Praise of Chickens provides centuries of poultry lore gathered from scientists, artists, poets, philosophers, breeders, sellers, feather fanciers, and egg-coddlers through the ages. Ever wonder if chickens have their very own vocabulary, how to get hens to lay in winter, or why churches have weathervanes shaped like roosters? Cant remember which royal court it was where the ladies hatched eggs in their bosoms? Whether you want the earliest recorded instructions on how to hypnotize a chicken, or nineteenth-century tips on sending a years supply of fresh eggs to your child in college, youll find the answer here, along with portraits of prize-winning breeds both fierce and fluffy.
In Praise of Chickens is full of information both practical and frivolous (and who can have enough of either sort?), wonderful pictures, ample poultry trivia for at least a year of dinner party or Chicken Meet-Up conversations, and a way of connecting with a time when living closer to the natural world was normal, honorable, and fun.
Review
Praise for Jane S. Smith's The Garden of Invention:
"A colorful, far-reaching book about the genetic, agricultural, economic and legal issues raised by Burbank's life and legend...Entertaining...[a] well-woven narrative...Impressive." -- Janet Maslin, The New York Times
"A first-class portrait -- witty, seamless and unflaggingly informed....[The Garden of Invention] brings Burbank to pulsing life even as it teaches plant science, patent law, eugenics, evolution and the fate of the prickly pear....I was, from its first sentence to last, a most grateful reader.” -- The Chicago Tribune
"A long overdue volume in food literature -- a great story, well told." -- Mark Kurlansky, author of Cod and Salt
Synopsis
Everywhere, it seems—from urban backyards to latter-day gentlemans farms in the country—chickens have become a passion for those who love animals, feel strongly about consuming locally, and/or find conventional mechanized alarm clocks somehow insufficient. And here is the book for such people.
What follows is a compact miscellany of chicken wisdom—a lively and amusing collection of quotations from past authorities on all things chicken, interspersed with brief editorial comments and complemented by wonderful illustrations. Whether a single sentence or several paragraphs, selections are all little known and long on charm. In Praise of Chickens can be savored in small pieces or enjoyably devoured all at once. It includes a demonstration of how to hypnotize a chicken; an account of a chicken rodeo; Mark Twains sly tips on raising chickens; and a dictionary of the twenty-three-word vocabulary of the domestic chicken.
Synopsis
Everywhere, it seems—from urban backyards to latter-day gentlemans farms in the country—chickens have become a passion for those who love animals, feel strongly about consuming locally, and/or find conventional mechanized alarm clocks somehow insufficient. And here is the book for such people.
Synopsis
A lavishly illustrated and delightfully surprising celebration of a bird that has captured the worlds imagination
A little plot of ground, a little poultry house, a little flock of hens, and a little love for domestic animals, make a combination which will give the poor man in a city, at trifling cost, luxuries for which his rich neighbor is glad to pay liberally.
—John Henry Robinson, Poultry-Craft, 1899
About the Author
Jane S. Smith, PhD, is the award-winning author of several books, including Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine, which received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; and, most recently, The Garden of Invention, winner of the Caroline Bancroft Prize in Western History.