I must say that, initially, I was quite excited to have finally found a (seemingly) informative text about small animal care in my college book-store. After further reading, however, and in all honesty, I could not have been more disappointed with the so-called 'up-to-date' material that was presented in this book.

As an animal health care specialist and Veterinary student at the Ohio State University, I have been studying small animals for most of my life, and it was the section on birds in Dean Warren's publication that was most alarming to me. He suggests first of all that the only toys which can be provided within a large parrot's cage are bells which can safely be strung up, while anything else would surely be destroyed. This is true, although Warren forgets to mention that most birds enjoy destroying things, and they should be provided as many 'destructible' objects as possible (as long as none of the shredded pieces contain harmful parts that might injure the bird internally, and are promptly removed anyhow) to keep the bird stimulated and happy. We come next to the section on bird feeding, wherein a diet of seeds only has been suggested by the author. Even though he seems to imply that the seed diet should 'vary', it has long been established that an all-seed diet is more detrimental to domestic birds than beneficial. Birds should instead be fed a diet that is at least 74-80% pelleted material, which should often be supplemented with fruits, veggies, and perhaps even a bug or two every once in a while. Oily seeds especially need to be avoided, uinless they are offered as treats, because of their high fat content. The author also stresses that a supply of grit be offered to domestic birds at all times, to aid them in digesting their food. This, also, could not be further from the truth. Most of us certainly do not feed our dogs raw meat on a regular basis simply because their wild relatives eat it often in the wild. Similarly, domestic birds need be provided with absolutely no grit at all; in most cases they are not the same as wild birds, and grit has been shown to remove several beneficial vitamins from birds' systems (among them Vitamin A). The canary and finch, however, can tolerate a small amount of grit in their diets every few months.

Sadly, there was a good deal more misleading information in this book, including the out-dated notion that a cat's paws should be physically dragged across its scratching post to teach her to use it, though this will only teach most cats (who may not enjoy having their paws handled in this way) to avoid the object in question; the ridiculous statement that rats have 'bad qualities and characteristics' after a short discussion on their destructive history, although today's domestic rats are among the friendliest and most intelligent creatures; and the statement in the Animal Rights/Welfare section that there is no proof of a vegetarian diet being healthier than that of those of us who eat meat. I may not be a vegetarian, but just as there has been proof that eating meat is healthy for the human diet, just as many studies have shown that vegetarian and vegan diets might also be just as beneficial.

All of this, coupled with more than a few spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, make this a shoddy piece of work at best. The book does have beautiful photographs, but I would not recommend this title to anyone considering any sort of career in animal health.

It seemed like an intriguing concept when I read the front and back covers; something like either a James Elroy novel or Sidney Kirkpatrick's excellent "A Cast of Killers." Instead, this story goes back and forth and beyond -- part mystery, part horror story, part apocryphal Hollywood tell-all, part semi-documentation of the dangers of all too-intense hero worship -- and at the end of it, there is no sense of WHICH genre it falls into, thus making it a very muddled and confusing read.