Coke vs. Pepsi… Batman vs. Superman… PC vs. Mac… Lassie vs. Rin Tin Tin… Most of us have had to make the choice -- which side of the famous pairs do we fall on. Susan Orlean, the gifted author of Orchid Thief, has written a enlightening and entertaining biography which I was surprised to discover, moved me from Lassie’s corner to Rin Tin Tin’s (of course, being the dog lover I am, I think they’re both great).

In general, I do not read dog books - neither fiction, nor nonfiction. The author invariably kills off the dog and my heart can’t take it. However, Rin Tin Tin was born in France in 1918, so his death, although sad, was not a surprise or heartbreak.

During WWI, Corporal Lee Duncan was on a scouting mission in a bombed out field in France when he discovered a kennel filled with many dead dogs as well as a female German shepherd and her five puppies. Lee was always a dog lover. Abandoned by his mother as a very young boy, he knew a dog’s loyalty was more reliable than a human’s. Lee rescued the dogs, kept two of them for himself and found homes for the rest.

After the war, Lee spent hours working with his intelligent and talented best friend and he believed the dog was a natural born actor, ready for the new form of entertainment sweeping the country, the movies. Although the focus of Rin Tin Tin is the dog, it is the human Lee who naturally keeps the story moving forward and, although flawed, it’s hard not to like a man who so clearly loved a dog. We follow man and dog through the early years when they made movie after movie after movie until the evolution into movies with sound compelled a difficult transition onto the pair. Man and dog were forced into some uncomfortable situations trying to make a living, until the advent of television. In 1954, “The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin” aired on television, introducing the gallant dog to a whole new generation of children and creating a new market for everything Rin Tin Tin. There were so many ups and downs in the pair’s lives, I couldn’t imagine how they coped. But Lee (and later his partner, Bert) believed in the legend of Rin Tin Tin and somehow always managed to land on his feet.

I picked Rin Tin Tin up just to get a feel for the book but before I knew it, I found myself halfway through. Early in the book Orlean writes, “I began to understand that what drew me to Rin Tin Tin most of all was his permanence -- how he had managed to linger in the minds of so many people for so long, when so much else shines for a moment only and then finally fades away. He was something you could dream about. He could leap twelve feet, and he could leap through time.” A great book, a talented writer. ~Patti