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Casanova's Parrot: And Other Tales of the Famous and Their Pets
Casanova's Parrot And Other Tales of the Famous and Their Pets Author:Mark Bryant Sir Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler, Alexander the Great and Charlemagne, Ernest Hemingway, Margaret Mitchell, and Mark Twainthey orated, marched, and wrote their way into history. Less publicly, they also doted on their pets. So have generals, presidents, monarchs, poets, painters, philosophers, explorers, scientists, and countless oth... more »er celebrities down through the centuries. This entertaining compendium of tales, from that of a ten-year-old Alexander taming a wild black stallion to the story of a Nazi dictators infatuation with his Alsatian, Blondi, casts the human nature of frequently formidable public figures in new light. The pets in this books lively pages leap, shriek, squawk, crawl, curl, fly, spill, taunt, rule, and inspire. They also bite, as did Josephines dog, Fortune, on his mistresss wedding night, evidently convinced that she was being attacked by Napoleon in her bed. More dignified, Freuds chow, Jo-Fi, for seven years faithfully attended the illustrious doctors sessions of analysisto no recorded effect on the analysands, or the dog. Then there was the Cromwells pet monkey, which kidnapped baby Oliver and dragged him to the rooftop of the family house. And Casanovas parrot, which raucously repeated in the streets a stream of obscenities attached to the name of his masters former amour. Or the pooch that Dorothy Parker called Woodrow Wilson. Like most of the colorful cases in this amusing volume, Parkers relationship with her pooch reveals as much about the private quirks and personal idiosyncrasies of the owner as it does the pet. Black-and-white illustrations throughout add to this engaging collection of true and often comical tales.« less