Presents a photographic account of the different worldwide breeds of pig and wild boar, and includes anecdotes about the pig breeds and their history with humans.

"In loving yet unsentimental prose, Sy Montgomery captures the richness that animals bring to the human experience. Sometimes it takes a too-smart-for-his-own-good pig to open our eyes to what most matters in life.” —John Grogan, author of Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog A naturalist who spent months at a time living on her own among wild creatures in remote jungles, Sy Montgomery had always felt more comfortable with animals than with people. So she gladly opened her heart to a sick piglet who had been crowded away from nourishing meals by his stronger siblings. Yet Sy had no inkling that this piglet, later named Christopher Hogwood, would not only survive but flourish—and she soon found herself engaged with her small-town community in ways she had never dreamed possible. Unexpectedly, Christopher provided this peripatetic traveler with something she had sought all her life: an anchor (eventually weighing 750 pounds) to family and home. The Good Good Pig celebrates Christopher Hogwood in all his glory, from his inauspicious infancy to hog heaven in rural New Hampshire, where his boundless zest for life and his large, loving heart made him absolute monarch over a (mostly) peaceable kingdom. At first, his domain included only Sy’s cosseted hens and her beautiful border collie, Tess. Then the neighbors began fetching Christopher home from his unauthorized jaunts, the little girls next door started giving him warm, soapy baths, and the villagers brought him delicious leftovers. His intelligence and fame increased along with his girth. He was featured in USA Today and on several National Public Radio environmental programs. On election day, some voters even wrote in Christopher’s name on their ballots. But as this enchanting book describes, Christopher Hogwood’s influence extended far beyond celebrity; for he was, as a friend said, a great big Buddha master. Sy reveals what she and others learned from this generous soul who just so happened to be a pig—lessons about self-acceptance, the meaning of family, the value of community, and the pleasures of the sweet green Earth. The Good Good Pig provides proof that with love, almost anything is possible.

Featuring commissioned studio photography of fine breeds styled from snout to tail, the animals showcased here just love to hog the limelight. Top breeds from around the world are represented—from the graceful Large Black to the aristocratic Tamworth and the much-traveled Kune-Kune—with graphic charts containing all the essential breed information. There’s also a potted history of pigs, plus reportage photography of the behind-the-scenes primping and preening at the agricultural shows, to capture the care that is lavished on prizewinning pigs and the nail-biting judging process. This is a book to gladden the heart of pig-lovers the world over. Packed with breed information, Beautiful Pigs is a unique gift guaranteed to make every reader feel, well, as happy as a pig in muck.

The Whole Hog is just that, an attempt to encompass everything that is known about all the pigs of the world. George Orwell was right. Pigs are unquestionably the farmyard animals most likely to succeed. But why, exactly? Science has been slow to pin down the source of their superiority. Pigs are dramatically different from their closest and more placid relatives, sheep, deer and cattle. During forty million years of evolution, they seem to have made a series of canny decisions, adapting to changing circumstances much as humans have - by becoming more versatile, more gregarious and more curious. Sixteen species of wild pigs now occupy every continent except Australia and Antarctica, filling in the environmental gaps by deploying a panoply of domestic and feral forms - pigs for all seasons. The Whole Hog is their story. The biologist Lyall Watson has tracked pigs in the wild, observed their resourceful and playful lives, deciphered their grunts and oinks - and is convinced pigs deserve new respect.

A popular magician offers a guide to the most exotic entertainers in the history of showbusiness--from the amazing feats of handicapped individuals to the unusual talents of trained animals

Pig 3: Pig, Duck, Cow and all the Sheeps are far away from their Farm and beloved Vegetarian Farmers. More fun, parps, slops and unbelievable adventure from this much-loved set of characters. Complete with illustrations throughout and printed in a unique diary format.

Unlike other barnyard animals, which pull plows, give eggs or milk, or grow wool, a pig produces only one thing: meat. Incredibly efficient at converting almost any organic matter into nourishing, delectable protein, swine are nothing short of a gastronomic godsend—yet their flesh is banned in many cultures, and the animals themselves are maligned as filthy, lazy brutes. As historian Mark Essig reveals in Lesser Beasts, swine have such a bad reputation for precisely the same reasons they are so valuable as a source of food: they are intelligent, self-sufficient, and omnivorous. What’s more, he argues, we ignore our historic partnership with these astonishing animals at our peril. Tracing the interplay of pig biology and human culture from Neolithic villages 10,000 years ago to modern industrial farms, Essig blends culinary and natural history to demonstrate the vast importance of the pig and the tragedy of its modern treatment at the hands of humans. Pork, Essig explains, has long been a staple of the human diet, prized in societies from Ancient Rome to dynastic China to the contemporary American South. Yet pigs’ ability to track down and eat a wide range of substances (some of them distinctly unpalatable to humans) and convert them into edible meat has also led people throughout history to demonize the entire species as craven and unclean. Today’s unconscionable system of factory farming, Essig explains, is only the latest instance of humans taking pigs for granted, and the most recent evidence of how both pigs and people suffer when our symbiotic relationship falls out of balance. An expansive, illuminating history of one of our most vital yet unsung food animals, Lesser Beasts turns a spotlight on the humble creature that, perhaps more than any other, has been a mainstay of civilization since its very beginnings—whether we like it or not.