Not all of Thompson’s subjects are crackpots. In fact, one of the more surprising episodes involves William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada’s longest-serving prime minister. King’s 21 years in power – longer than those of any other British prime minister – spanned the turmoil of the Great Depression, the chaos of 1930s Europe and World War II. But his reputation as an impeccable statesman sank rapidly after his death in 1950, when 50,000 pages of private diaries were discovered in which he described his enthusiastic visits to mediums, his belief that he could tell time telepathically – and his conviction that the spirit of his late mother spoke through his Irish terrier, Pat.

“Sometimes I think he is a comforter sent to me by my dear mother,” King wrote of his pet. “He is filled with her patience, tenderness and love.” King discussed the Bible with Pat, a subject that the dog obviously enjoyed. “Before I went to bed, I talked a little with Pat in his basket. We talked together about the Christ Child and the animals in the manger.”

Between 1915 and 1922, King suffered a series of losses, losing his father, mother, and sister in quick succession. Thompson treats King’s strange ideas with admirable gentleness. King’s fervent belief that he could communicate with his dog is easy to mock, but also easy to understand. And although Thompson himself does not make the comparison, King’s transgressions may ultimately have been less damaging to his fellow humans than, say, Winston Churchill’s Olympic drinking or Franklin D. Roosevelt’s womanizing. At the heart of Thompson’s book is the idea that we reveal the most about ourselves in trying to understand other living beings.

My favorite part of Domadomadoma-Blumblumblum is the digression into the bizarre history of animal prosecution. In the Middle Ages, pigs were frequently the target of legal battles and sentenced to death for trespassing or eating small children. But they weren’t the only animals to feel the force of the law: Fruit flies, goats, cows, woodworms and moles were all tried. In 1487, the priests of Autun, France, excommunicated snails from the town. But putting animals on trial is also a more recent phenomenon: In 1916, the citizens of Kingsport, Tennessee, hung Mary, a five-ton circus elephant, from a railroad crane after she killed her keeper, Walter Eldridge, when he strapped her to a metal hook. Today, Kingsport sponsors an elephant sanctuary as an act of atonement.