Thomas W. Laqueur: On the Genius of a Great Editor
In this interview, author Thomas W. Laqueur discusses the astonishing dog facts he discovered in the process of writing his new book, The Dog’s Gaze.
Thomas W. Laqueur is the Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. An internationally renowned cultural historian, he has published books on topics ranging from working class religion and education to the history of sexuality and the body. He is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society and recipient of the 2007 Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award and the 2016 Cundill History Prize. His work has been translated into 20 languages.
In this interview, Thomas discusses the astonishing dog facts he discovered in the process of writing her new book, The Dog’s Gaze, his advice for other writers, and more.
Name: Thomas W. Laqueur
Literary agent: Clare Alexander of Aiken-Alexander (London)
Book title: The Dog’s Gaze: A Visual History
Publisher: Penguin Press
Release date: May 5, 2026
Genre/category: Nonfiction, Art, History, Art History, and Pets
Previous titles: Religion and Respectability; Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture 1780-1850; Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud; Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation; The Work of the De3ad: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains
Elevator pitch: The book blends cultural and natural history in order to show the central and yet unrecognized place of dogs in how we how we see ourselves in the visual arts.
What prompted you to write this book?
Once I came to see how many dogs there were in visual art from the Paleolithic to the present day—far more than any other animal—and how central and yet unseen they were even in well-known masterpieces, I wanted both to make people see this (“just have a look” I wanted to insist) and to explain why it was the case.
I also wanted to connect the long evolutionary history of dogs that began when a species that hunts in pacts and communicates through visual cues, the proto great wolf, met another such species—us—in the Eurasian ice age. Seeing and being seen by dogs beginning tens of thousands of years ago became a major feature of our art. I thought that this was extraordinary and wanted to make it more widely known. I also wanted to share some of my archive of pictures and sculptures of dogs and art. There are 256 of them in the book.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
With this book, as with all my others, a very long time. In 1995, I was asked to comment on an exhibition called “The New Child in Eighteenth Century British Art.” I said in passing that it might have been called “The New Dog…” because a third of the paintings by the greatest artists of the period had dogs. Why? I wondered, and why had no one noticed? Over the next 20 years I gathered many more examples that spanned the world and went back tens of thousands of years. Then in 2015, I was invited to give the Faculty Research Lecture at my university to a general audience of colleagues, students, and community members. I called it “How Dogs Make Us Human,” and it forced me to think about evolutionary history.
This was the first big change in my ideas. Five years later, a publisher found the lecture on the web and offered me a contract. A friend suggested that instead of accepting, I find an agent and write a proposal to see if others might be interested. I found the wonderful Clare Alexander. Writing a proposal forced me to think through how I might tell the story of a scale and for an audience that I had not imagined before. Finally, the wonderful editors at Penguin—Stuart Profitt in particular—helped me write the best book I could write. It made me appreciate the genius of a great editor.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
The depth of human engagement with dogs continued to surprise me. The very first image we have of our doing anything with an animal—on petroglyphs in the Arabian dessert form circa 9000 BCE—shows hundreds of dogs hunting wild horses with humans. No one knows why our ancestors wanted to make this art. Dogs were, by thousands of years, the first animal domesticated—proof of concept—and the first and only animal that by its nature wants our company and looks into our eyes. I was astonished by how these facts work their way through myth, art and literature.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
My book before this one was 350,000 words long and written for a largely academic audience. It was a great pleasure to learn to write on a smaller scale with greater attention my readers. Every rabbit hole did not require exploration.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
An appreciate of the dog in art and culture. I also hope that cat people might be interested. I discuss cats in art and try to explain precisely what cat people love about their pets—that they are their own creatures who indulge us as they please—makes them play much less of a part in myth and art if not in our hearts.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Try to stay as close as possible to what engages both your rational mind and the parts of your subconscious to which you have access. Be patient and stick with it rather than writing to the supposed dictates of a public. It will pay off.
