A compilation of thoughts, facts, and literature on the African elephant, from a former journalist and scholar who has written extensively about the continent.
Elephants once ranged over all of Africa; now only five countries there have populations of more than 50,000. Meredith (Coming to Terms, 2000, etc.) begins 5,000 years ago in Egypt, whose pharaohs hunted elephants for their ivory until the climate became too arid to support such herds. They then turned to Syria, eventually driving the small Asian elephant population to extinction. The author next profiles Alexander the Great, who was so impressed by the Persians’ use of armored elephants that he incorporated them into his own army after 331 b.c. But by 46 b.c., the African elephant’s primary use was for entertainment: Romans pitted gladiators against dozens of elephants at a time, and the demand for this brutal spectacle eventually rendered the North African herds all but extinct. Over centuries, the African elephant population suffered losses and made gains until the great ivory trade began in the mid-1400s. Due to the lucrative market in piano keys and billiard balls (among other items), by 1760 elephant herds in southern Africa were much diminished, and by 1880 they had vanished. In East and West Africa, the same story was playing out. At this point, Meredith focuses on recent scientific studies, notably the work of Iain and Oria Douglas-Hamilton, Cynthia Moss, Joyce Poole, and Katherine Payne. He’s an engaging writer, and his synopses should lead readers to the original works themselves. He concludes with the great ivory wars of the 1970s and ’80s, naming Hong Kong and Japan as the major culprits. Now that many countries have joined the ban on ivory, some elephant populations may make a comeback, but their situation is perilous at best. The author provides a nice overview of the troubles facing the African elephant, but no original research at all.
Serviceable, though nothing new. (8 pages b&w photos, 32 illustrations)
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford,where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalistSvensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with hisfather. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father,a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us evertalking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down thereby the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because wewere in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout,Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account withpeople: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering,enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste,Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; JohannesSchmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for theirbreeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, theauthor turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’sUnderthe Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’The Tin Drum—and history. Henotes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and heexplores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), howeel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importanceof eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to lifeof a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherentmessage of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creaturefrom extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readableplace to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
