Carol Bradley

If you grew up watching Westerns in movie theaters or on television, like I did, you're bound to find Twisting in Air fascinating. Carol Bradley's book is an absorbing look at the early dark history of stunt horses in movies, to its heyday, and on to the present day. I've been a horse lover my entire life, and I'm glad I didn't watch those early Westerns before the Hollywood Production Code's ban on cruelty to animals.

I learned so much about the training and development of falling horses, show more but-- as usual-- it was the relationship between rider and horse that was key. The relationship explored the most in Twisting in Air is between stunt rider Chuck Roberson and his horse Cocaine. Roberson was the inspiration for the TV series "The Fall Guy," and he doubled for John Wayne many times.

This book explores the entire history of stunt riders and horses, from the early days of the Wild West shows to now. Once the Hollywood Production Code and the Humane Society began to have an increased say in how animals were treated, I knew it was only a matter of time before uncaring, miserly film producers found a way around the rules. (Countries outside the U.S. didn't have those same laws.) What about movies being made today? Computer-generated imagery is a wonderful thing.

Twisting in Air was a valuable read for me because it filled in so many gaps in my knowledge of the movies and television shows I loved to watch in my youth (including the true meaning of animals' facial expressions). Stunt men like Chuck Roberson and horses like Cocaine worked hard to bring a safe kind of realism to Westerns. They really were teams that cared for one another, and I'm glad I now know more about them.

(Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Net Galley) show less

Escape from the circus

Billie, an Asian elephant captured as a baby and trained for the circus, serves as the focal point for Carol Bradley's history of animals in American circuses. Last Chain on Billie: How One Extraordinary Elephant Escaped the Big Top (St. Martin's Press, $25.99) follows Billie from capture to her eventual release to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee—hence the “last chain” of the title. It's a thorough examination of the mistreatment of animals captured, trained show more and exhibited for the entertainment of humans. Exhaustively footnoted, Bradley details cruel training practices and the ethical questions around using animals this way. While Billie is the exemplar of these practices, the book's mission is to inform and outrage, and it is extremely effective at that.

Reviewed for the Sacramento News & Review: http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/escape-from-the-circus/content?oid=14279239 show less

This is as much a history of elephants performing in circuses as it is about this particular elephant so the title is a bit a misleading. Bradley's behind-the-scenes look at the life of circus and zoo elephants exposes the cruel world that all circus and zoo elephants endure in order to learn the unnatural tricks that entertain the public. Bradley is unflinching in her disturbing, sometimes horrific, descriptions of the history and evolution of the performing elephant world, where brutality show more by human trainers, inhumane living conditions and isolation force elephants into submission. Billie's fate is a rare happy one, as she is one of the circus elephants who ends up in the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. Bradley does a great job explaining the important work of this center devoted to rehabilitation and giving as comfortable and natural a life as possible to these rescued elephants. show less

A good look at the puppy mill industry and the fight to find a way to regulate them and reduce the demand for pure breed dogs which keeps this industry thriving. A candid look at the lives of these dogs and how loving adopters find a way to give their dogs a better life.