Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788195654239
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Levison Wood
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 080215848X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
From the award-winning explorer, “an entertaining summary of what we know about the elephant, and a call to change our behavior to ensure its survival” (Daily Mail). The Last Giants satisfies British explorer Levison Wood’s lifelong desire to learn more about the majestic African elephant. These giants trek through some of Africa’s most magnificent landscapes as they go in search of life-giving waters and pastures. El Nino’s droughts and an insatiable ivory trade have cut African elephant numbers by a third in the last decade alone, and if elephants disappear entirely, Africa’s entire ecosystem could collapse. But Botswana has become a safe haven, where one-sixth of the world’s elephants now reside. Each year their numbers grow and an incredible migration takes place, which Wood witnesses and records. He teams up with local trackers to gain insight into how this iconic species survives, camps out in the wild, meets the people and tribes living on the migration’s path, and joins the park rangers whose job it is to protect these land goliaths, equipped with his “good eye for detail and better ear for dialogue” (The Wall Street Journal). “Adventurer Wood followed elephants on a 650-mile migration across Botswana for a British television program. This fascinating companion volume to that series examines the past, present, and future of the African elephant.” —Library Journal (starred review) “A smart, inviting portrait of elephants from a keen-eyed observer.” —Kirkus Reviews “A rewarding look at the habits and habitats of the African elephant . . . Comprehensively yet accessibly conveying Wood’s lifelong fascination with African elephants, his discussion will appeal to anyone keen on learning more about them.” —Publishers Weekly

Author: Tarquin Hall
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 0802158382
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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“Introduces us to the darker side of the Asian elephant. It is more of a thriller than a straightforward travel book . . . insightful and sensitive.” —Literary Review On India’s northeast frontier, a killer elephant is on the rampage, stalking Assam’s paddy fields and murdering dozens of farmers. Local forestry officials, powerless to stop the elephant, call in one of India’s last licensed elephant hunters and issue a warrant for the rogue’s destruction. Reading about the ensuing hunt in a Delhi newspaper, journalist Tarquin Hall flies to Assam to investigate. To the Elephant Graveyard is the compelling account of the search for a killer elephant in the northeast corner of India, and a vivid portrait of the Khasi tribe, who live intimately with the elephants. Though it seems a world of peaceful coexistence between man and beast, Hall begins to see that the elephants are suffering, having lost their natural habitat to the destruction of the forests and modernization. Hungry, confused, and with little forest left to hide in, herds of elephants are slowly adapting to domestication, but many are resolute and furious. Often spellbinding with excitement, like “a page-turning detective tale” (Publishers Weekly), To the Elephant Graveyard is also intimate and moving, as Hall magnificently takes us on a journey to a place whose ancient ways are fast disappearing with the ever-shrinking forest. “Hall is to be congratulated on writing a book that promises humor and adventure, and delivers both.” —The Spectator “Travel writing that wonderfully hits on all cylinders.” —Booklist “A wonderful book that should become a classic.” —Daily Mail

Author: Jacob Shell
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393247775
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
“No one who loves elephants or how humans interact with wildlife should pass up Jacob Shell’s remarkable book.” —Dan Flores, author of Coyote America Giants of the Monsoon Forest journeys deep into the mountainous rainforests of Burma and India to explore the world of teak logging elephants and their intriguing alliance with humans. Jacob Shell’s narrative vividly depicts elephants’ extraordinary intelligence, and the complicated bond with individual human riders, a partnership that can last for decades. Giants of the Monsoon Forest reveals an unexpected relationship between evolution in the natural world and political struggles in the human one, while considering how Asia’s secret forest culture might offer a way to help protect the fragile spaces both elephants and humans need to survive.

Author: Arthur H. Neumann
Publisher: Рипол Классик
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Being an Account of Three Years' Ivory-Hunting Under Mount Kenia and Among the Ndorobo Savages of the Lorogi Mountains. Including a Trip to the North of Lake Rudolph

Author: Thomas R. Trautmann
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022626453X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
Because of their enormous size, elephants have long been irresistible for kings as symbols of their eminence. In early civilizations—such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization, and China—kings used elephants for royal sacrifice, spectacular hunts, public display of live captives, or the conspicuous consumption of ivory—all of them tending toward the elephant’s extinction. The kings of India, however, as Thomas R. Trautmann shows in this study, found a use for elephants that actually helped preserve their habitat and numbers in the wild: war. Trautmann traces the history of the war elephant in India and the spread of the institution to the west—where elephants took part in some of the greatest wars of antiquity—and Southeast Asia (but not China, significantly), a history that spans 3,000 years and a considerable part of the globe, from Spain to Java. He shows that because elephants eat such massive quantities of food, it was uneconomic to raise them from birth. Rather, in a unique form of domestication, Indian kings captured wild adults and trained them, one by one, through millennia. Kings were thus compelled to protect wild elephants from hunters and elephant forests from being cut down. By taking a wide-angle view of human-elephant relations, Trautmann throws into relief the structure of India’s environmental history and the reasons for the persistence of wild elephants in its forests.

Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
ISBN: 1667640550
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
Burmese Days is George Orwell's first novel, originally published in 1934. Set in British Burma during the waning days of the British empire, when Burma was ruled from Delhi as part of British India, the novel serves as a portrait of the dark side of the British Raj. At the center of the novel is John Flory, trapped within a bigger system that is undermining the better side of human nature. The novel deals with indigenous corruption and imperial bigotry in a society where natives peoples were viewed as interesting, but ultimately inferior. Includes a bibliography and brief bio of the author.

Author: Chauncy Hugh Stigand
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Africa, East
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Author: Raman Sukumar
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198026730
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 495

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Book Description
The Living Elephants is the authoritative resource for information on both Asian and African elephants. From the ancient origins of the proboscideans to the present-day crisis of the living elephants, this volume synthesizes the behavior, ecology and conservation of elephants, while covering also the history of human interactions with elephants, all within the theoretical framework of evolutionary biology. The book begins with a survey of the 60-million year evolutionary history of the proboscideans emphasizing the role of climate and vegetation change in giving rise to a bewildering array of species, but also discussing the possible role of humans in the late Pleistocene extinction of mastodonts and mammoths. The latest information on the molecular genetics of African and Asian elephants and its taxonomic implications are then presented. The rise of the elephant culture in Asia, and its early demise in Africa are traced along with an original interpretation of this unique animal-human relationship. The book then moves on to the social life of elephants as it relates to reproductive strategies of males and females, development of behavior in young, communication, ranging patterns, and societal organization. The foraging strategies of elephants, their impact on the vegetation and landscape are then discussed. The dynamics of elephant populations in relation to hunting for ivory and their population viability are described with the aid of mathematical models. A detailed account of elephant-human interactions includes a treatment of crop depredation by elephants in relation to their natural ecology, manslaughter by elephants, habitat manipulation by humans, and a history of the ivory trade and poaching in the two continents. The ecological information is brought together in the final chapter to formulate a set of pragmatic recommendations for the long-term conservation of elephants. The broadest treatment of the subject yet undertaken, by one of the leading workers in the field, Raman Sukumar, the book promises to bring the understanding of elephants to a new level. It should be of interest not only to biologists but also a broader audience including field ecologists, wildlife administrators, historians, conservationists and all those interested in elephants and their future.

Author: John D. Grainger
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473838606
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
The first of three books on the ancient Greek dynasty “reads with the pull of a novel and shows how the new Empire rose and fell.”—Firetrench The Seleukid kingdom was the largest state in the world for a century and more between Alexander’s death and the rise of Rome. The first king, Seleukos I, established a pattern of rule which was unusually friendly towards his subjects, and his policies promoted the steady growth of wealth and population in many areas which had been depopulated when he took them over. In particular the dynasty was active in founding cities from Asia Minor to Central Asia. Its work set the social and economic scene of the Middle East for many centuries to come. Yet these kings had to be warriors too as they defended their realm from jealous neighbors. John D Grainger’s trilogy charts the rise and fall of this superpower of the ancient world. In the first volume, he relates the remarkable twists of fortune and daring that saw Seleukos, an officer in an elite guard unit, emerge from the wars of the Diadochi (Alexander’s successors) in control of the largest and richest part of the empire of the late Alexander the Great. After his conquests and eventual murder, we then see how his successors continued his policies, including the repeated wars with the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt over control of Syria. The volume ends with the deep internal crisis and the Wars of the Brothers, which left only a single member of the dynasty alive in 223 BC.