Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Overall, it’s well written and very amusing. There are some interesting (even fascinating) and accurate nuggets of information in this book. But as other reviewers have pointed out, there are numerous factual errors, and more importantly key omissions of data. These damage the credibility of the book overall. Before reading the book, you might want to listen to the author's podcast interview on pointofinquiry. I believe this provides a good representation of the quality of the data in the book. I really didn’t want to provide a harsh review, because the author clearly put a lot of effort into the book. But ultimately the content is analogous to a person who took one college class in economics trying to write a best seller to explain the Great Recession. In other words, beware of bad information and inaccurate interpretation. I’d also like to encourage other readers to chime in here with comments to provide examples of points that need to be corrected. Because I truly believe this book deserves a second/revised edition. If the errors and omissions are updated, it could be a great book. Doing my part, here are a couple points to update: 1) The author emphatically made the case that no cat breeders have ever tried to breed cats for temperament. Only for physical appearance. The history of the “Ragdoll” is a critical omission here. Wikipedia doesn’t go into the reason why the original breeder “spurned traditional cat breeding associations,” but that reason was that those associations at the time wouldn’t accept temperament as a differentiating feature to establish a new breed. 2) When talking about why cats are now kept indoors vs. outside, the emphasis is placed on factors of human convenience such as the invention of kitty litter (omitting mention of shredded newspaper before that), smaller homes due to increased urbanization, the rise of the 2-income household (cats don't need to be walked), and the aging population (cats are easier to care for). Deemphasized, if not entirely omitted (I guess I could have missed it) was the biggest driver for cats becoming indoor animals — at least according to shelters and vets, which is: for the safety of the cat.