Customer Reviews:
 Showing its age June 12, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book has for decades enjoyed such a reputation that my expectations were set high when I started reading. It did not quite live up to them. Konrad's language is not well served in this somewhat stunted anonymous translation that maintains many of the more stilted and clumsy constructions that are natural to the original German but sound strange to a speaker of English.
Konrad is also given to making rather absolute statements about nature and animals, a fair number of which have in the intervening decades been proved simply wrong, which makes the reader wonder about the others.
It is still an entertaining book; but not by any stretch of the imagination the scientific giant I expected to meet.
 Thought-provokingly entertaining January 6, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Lorenz was an exceptional academic in many regards. This is perhaps one of the reasons why he was often criticised by his peers for his writing style and approach to academic texts. That is why I think one of his best qualities both as a writer and a researcher is his careful concern for his readers and his animal `subjects'. While reading most of his books, especially this one, you can feel the positive emotions he has for animals. He takes a great deal of care in depicting events that happened to him or were observed by him involving a wide range of animals. Moreover, Lorenz had a lively sense of humour and self-criticism that is a very enjoyable addition to the real stories he provides.
I particularly enjoyed his confessions regarding the people in his village and the way they, often suspiciously, watched his untraditional connections to animals. One story stands out. On his return form Vienna at the train station Lorenz noticed a fairly large bird circling above the station. He shortly realised that it was one of his rare birds with which he had developed a very friendly relationship. The bird was getting ready to embark on a longer flight that might have prevented it from finding its way back home. Lorenz did not want to risk this and thus, with the utter astonishment of the crowd at the train station, began to loudly imitate the calling signal. In the end everything went well; he had the bird landing on his arm and the bystanders understood his sudden vocal outburst.
I would recommend this book especially to teenagers who want to learn more about animals (and human societies), extend their vocabulary or just have some `giggles' at expense of Lorenz's often unorthodox ways of conducting experiments.
 Speaking with animals July 1, 2002
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
If King Solomon's Ring enabled him to speak to the animals, this book enabled us to understand them a little better, and although many discoveries have been made in the last decades in Ethology and in Animal Behavior, Konrad Lorenz work remains actual and that's why King Solomon's Ring, like any Konrad Lorenz book is an essential classic to any animal-lover, behaviorist, or psychologist.
I truly recommend this book to anyone interested in the animal mind, even to those with no scientific interest in the subject, this book makes an excellent reading, and allows to reflect about the beauty and complexity of the animal world, that was, and in a certain way it still is, our world ( although we seem to have forgotten).
Speaking with animals June 15, 2002
16 out of 17 found this review helpful
If King Solomon's Ring enabled him to speak to the animals, this book enabled us to understand them a little better, and although many discoveries have been made in the last decades in Ethology and in Animal Behavior, Konrad Lorenz work remains actual and that's why King Solomon's Ring, like any Konrad Lorenz book is an essential classic to any animal-lover, behaviorist, or psychologist.
I truly recommend this book to anyone interested in the animal mind, even to those with no scientific interest in the subject, this book makes an excellent reading, and allows to reflect about the beauty and complexity of the animal world, that was, and in a certain way it still is, our world ( although we seem to have forgotten).
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