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Animal Series
四足游龙：蜥蜴与人类文明
《四足游龙：蜥蜴与人类文明》介绍了蜥蜴如何激发了人类的想象力，尽管它们通常身形较小，悄无声息地隐藏在洞穴、树梢或缝隙中，但它们的重要性却经常被夸大或低估。通常它们会被称为其他东西——龙、蛇或怪物。这本书展示了蜥蜴的故事是如何与人类的想象力交织在一起的，很好具有启发性。
- GenresNonfiction
164 pages, Paperback
First published October 15, 2017
About the author
Boria Sax
36 books99 followersA person is not a list of accomplishments, and so I prefer not to introduce myself in that way. It is more accurate to say each of us is a collection of stories. Like others, I have more stories than I could ever tell or even know. I have been, among other things, a human rights activist, an impoverished poet, a manual worker, an expert on online education, and a pioneer in Animal Studies.
I was raised on Communism, the grandest of grand narratives. it sought to explain everything but didn’t explain anything very well. I have always missed its dramatic sweep. I wanted big answers for the big questions. I wouldn’t accept the little ones and kept getting in trouble with my teachers.
My father had been a Soviet spy, passing atomic secrets, and the initial years of my life were spent with my nearly destitute family trying to shake the FBI by moving many times a year. My father, a Russian Jew, was impulsive, brilliant, loving, abusive, and seriously mentally ill. My mother, coming from a rather puritanical British background, saw him as a romantic rebel. She was drawn to the Civil Rights movement and was a co-founder of CORE (the Congress on Racial Equality), but the difficulties of survival overwhelmed her idealism. She held our family together with a sort of everyday heroism, and my parents divorced after 18 tempestuous years.
Rather than focusing exclusively on any specialty, I like to draw analogies between domains that appear very far apart. In the 1980s, when I began to write about literature, I was disappointed to discover that I had to spend far more time sorting through commentaries than with poems and stories. The topic of animals in literature and folklore was, however, relatively new. Browsing in used bookshops, I came across eighteenth and nineteenth century encyclopedias of animals, which were an uncharted world of comedy and romance, filled with turkeys that speak Arabic, beavers that build like architects, and dogs that solve murders. They revealed every bit as much about human society as about birds and beasts.
I started writing mostly about human-animal relations and never stopped. Indulging my fondness for paradoxes, I addressed subjects like Nazi animal protection, the modernity of the ravens in the Tower of London, and the Thanksgiving turkey as a sacrificial offering. As for trees, I think of them as just a kind of animal. By now, I have published roughly twenty books, which have been translated into many languages. I often violate academic protocols, not only by addressing broad themes but also by inserting humor and lyricism into my texts. I teach in the college program of the Sing Sing Correctional Facility and the graduate literature program of Mercy University.
There have been two constants in my somewhat untidy life. One is the support of my wife Linda, who has been with me over half a century and whom I cannot thank enough. The other is my writing, which I have worked on continually but am unable to judge. Thanks, reader, for reading this, and I hope you are inspired to read more.
I was raised on Communism, the grandest of grand narratives. it sought to explain everything but didn’t explain anything very well. I have always missed its dramatic sweep. I wanted big answers for the big questions. I wouldn’t accept the little ones and kept getting in trouble with my teachers.
My father had been a Soviet spy, passing atomic secrets, and the initial years of my life were spent with my nearly destitute family trying to shake the FBI by moving many times a year. My father, a Russian Jew, was impulsive, brilliant, loving, abusive, and seriously mentally ill. My mother, coming from a rather puritanical British background, saw him as a romantic rebel. She was drawn to the Civil Rights movement and was a co-founder of CORE (the Congress on Racial Equality), but the difficulties of survival overwhelmed her idealism. She held our family together with a sort of everyday heroism, and my parents divorced after 18 tempestuous years.
Rather than focusing exclusively on any specialty, I like to draw analogies between domains that appear very far apart. In the 1980s, when I began to write about literature, I was disappointed to discover that I had to spend far more time sorting through commentaries than with poems and stories. The topic of animals in literature and folklore was, however, relatively new. Browsing in used bookshops, I came across eighteenth and nineteenth century encyclopedias of animals, which were an uncharted world of comedy and romance, filled with turkeys that speak Arabic, beavers that build like architects, and dogs that solve murders. They revealed every bit as much about human society as about birds and beasts.
I started writing mostly about human-animal relations and never stopped. Indulging my fondness for paradoxes, I addressed subjects like Nazi animal protection, the modernity of the ravens in the Tower of London, and the Thanksgiving turkey as a sacrificial offering. As for trees, I think of them as just a kind of animal. By now, I have published roughly twenty books, which have been translated into many languages. I often violate academic protocols, not only by addressing broad themes but also by inserting humor and lyricism into my texts. I teach in the college program of the Sing Sing Correctional Facility and the graduate literature program of Mercy University.
There have been two constants in my somewhat untidy life. One is the support of my wife Linda, who has been with me over half a century and whom I cannot thank enough. The other is my writing, which I have worked on continually but am unable to judge. Thanks, reader, for reading this, and I hope you are inspired to read more.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 12, 2018
Having read the book in the series on Hedgehogs by Hugh Warwick I was anticipating something as joyful and full of love as that. What I got was a small volume that was dry, dull, and sterile.
The subject matter was interesting, but the writer did not appear to be that involved in what he was writing about.
The subject matter was interesting, but the writer did not appear to be that involved in what he was writing about.
May 6, 2018
Almost all of us have “informal theories,” ideas that cannot quite be parsed in academic terms yet help to organize our thinking. One of mine is that every sort of animal corresponds to something in the human psyche. For wolves and tigers, that is something frightening and glamorous. For swans, that is mysterious, beautiful and sad. For the most part, lizards seem to lack the charisma of those animals, yet, on a largely unconscious level, we respond to their blend of fierceness and melancholy. Otherwise, why would we constantly make lizards into dragons? Why would we vastly exaggerate their size, and then bestow uncanny abilities, like breathing fire, upon them? I address these questions in my book Lizard, a history of relationships between lizards and human beings.
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February 10, 2025I liked it in the beginning and found some interesting facts in it, but I feel like it’s more about how humans perceive lizards (through art, imagination, depictions) rather than lizards themselves. If you’re curious about actual lizards, I don’t know if this is the book for you.
"Lizards even take on the colours that surround them, and they are sensually attuned to every motion or change in their vicinity. They lie so still that they can almost be mistaken for vegetation, yet they can react instantaneously if an insect comes in range. Lizards are a great many things that we are not, and that is why they fascinate us."
"Lizards even take on the colours that surround them, and they are sensually attuned to every motion or change in their vicinity. They lie so still that they can almost be mistaken for vegetation, yet they can react instantaneously if an insect comes in range. Lizards are a great many things that we are not, and that is why they fascinate us."
July 16, 2023
Quite a nice starting point to get started in the world of lizards. Touches upon the topic from various different angles such as culture, history, societal image, art, mythology and not just biology. Good read :)
January 6, 2018
some interesting facts but some wishy washy writing and iffy art history
great images, esp historical images of depictions of lizards
great images, esp historical images of depictions of lizards
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews