HISTOIRE DES ANIMAUX CELEBRES

Marie-Hélène Baylac invites us to a new and joyful rediscovery of the animal world, through a series of portraits of some of its most illustrious representatives.

Marie-Hélène Baylac has set out on the trail of animals that left their mark on history: Surus, Hannibal's favorite elephant; the First Dog at the White House; the talking birds of Louis XI; Marengo, Napoleon's last horse at Waterloo; Babar the elephant who learns civilization from humans; Dolly the cloned sheep; Laika the dog sacrificed to the conquest of space; President François Mitterrand's Labrador Baltique; and many more. The investigation leads the author in diverse directions, because animals are everywhere: not just at a human's side, but also in their imagination, transformed into literary characters and agents of human values. Through this series of surprising, moving and sometimes funny stories, in which the author displays her masterful storytelling skills, Marie-Hélène Baylac plunges us into history with a capital H: the personality and ambitions of world leaders and nations, diplomatic relations and armed conflict, the worlds of sports, science and business. Everywhere animals have played and continue to play an essential role, demonstrating that they “are indeed our brothers and sisters”. This exciting and multidimensional text, written in a lively style, marks an important contribution to the current debate on the growing awareness of the true value of animals. A former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure with a doctorate in history, Marie-Hélène Baylac has written about the French revolutionary period and the Empire. She is also interested in a transversal approach to history, as demonstrated in her last two books: Ces objets qui ont fait l'histoire (These objects that made history, First, 2013) and Dictionnaire Gourmand (A Gourmand's dictionary, Omnibus, 2014).