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Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives
Current price:
$21.99
Publication Date: May 17th, 2011
Publisher:
Hachette Books
ISBN:
9781401310530
Pages:
304
French takes us to Swaziland to witness the rescue of 11 elephants from certain death and their transport to zoos in Tampa and San Diego. In Tampa, where four of the elephants are placed, we become closely acquainted with the management and staff who work at Lowry Park Zoo. Both the animals and humans are unforgettable, and we learn of the age-old controversy over whether zoos truly provide education and conservation of species, or whether they exist solely for entertainment and earnings. My next visit to a zoo will be an entirely different experience having read this incredibly informative and controversial book.
August 2010 Indie Next List
Description
"This story, told by a master teller of such things, does more than take you inside the cages, fences, and walls of a zoo. It takes you inside the human heart, and an elephant's, and a primate's, and on and on. Tom French did in this book what he always does. He took real life and wrote it down for us, with eloquence and feeling and aching detail."
-Rick Bragg, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author
"An insightful and detailed look at the complex life of a zoo and its denizens, both animal and human."
-Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi and Beatrice and Virgil
Welcome to the savage and surprising world of Zoo Story, an unprecedented account of the secret life of a zoo and its inhabitants. Based on six years of research, the book follows a handful of unforgettable characters at Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo: an alpha chimp with a weakness for blondes, a ferocious tiger who revels in Obsession perfume, and a brilliant but tyrannical CEO known as El Diablo Blanco.
The sweeping narrative takes the reader from the African savannah to the forests of Panama and deep into the inner workings of a place some describe as a sanctuary and others condemn as a prison. Zoo Story shows us how these remarkable individuals live, how some die, and what their experiences reveal about the human desire to both exalt and control nature.
