Pit Bull The Battle over an American Icon [Paperback]

The controversial story of one infamous breed of dog--aNew York TimesBestseller ( Animals list).

When Bronwen Dickey brought her new dog home, she saw no traces of the infamous viciousness in her affectionate pit bull. Which made her wonder: How had the breed—beloved by Teddy Roosevelt and Helen Keller—come to be known as a brutal fighter? Dickey’s search for answers takes her from nineteenth-century New York dogfighting pits to early twentieth‑century movie sets, from the battlefields of Gettysburg to struggling urban neighborhoods. In this illuminating story of how a popular breed became demonized--and what role humans have played in the transformation--Dickey offers us an insightful view of Americans' relationship with their dogs.An NPR Best Book of 2016
ABoston GlobeBest Book of 2016

“This is a very good book… Ms. Dickey has earned her reputation as a first-rate reporter.”—The Wall Street Journal

Terrific... [Dickey] does more than simply dispel the many myths around pit bulls; she strives to explore what those myths can tell us about ourselves. This beautifully written, heartbreaking book is not just for dog lovers — it's for anyone interested in race, class, history and the complexity of media narratives. —NPR

Ms. Dickey not only writes about the ebb and flow of public fear and loathing, she takes the reader on a thoroughly comprehensible tour of genetics and behavioral science to explain why breeding never guarantees an individual dog’s personality, and shouldn’t be used to condemn it.... Picking out one breed to blame is neither warranted nor effective, and a reader of her book will be hard put to disagree. —The New York Times

“Brilliant… A powerful and disturbing book that shows how the rise of the killer-pit bull narrative reflelcã