Zoo Story
Life in the Garden of Captives
By Thomas French
(Hyperion, Hardcover, 9781401323462, 304pp.)
Publication Date: July 2010
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Compact Disc, Compact Disc, MP3 CD, Paperback
Categories: Wildlife, Animal Rights
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Selected by Indie Booksellers for the August 2010 Indie Next List“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.”
-- Sue Fleming, The King's English, Salt Lake City, UT
Description
Welcome to the savage and surprising world of "Zoo Story," an unprecedented account of the secret life of a zoo and its inhabitants, both animal and human. 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. "Zoo Story" crackles with issues of global urgency: the shadow of extinction, humanity's role in the destruction or survival of other species. More than anything else, though, it's a dramatic and moving true story of seduction and betrayal, exile and loss, and the limits of freedom on an overcrowded planet--all framed inside one zoo reinventing itself for the twenty-first century. Thomas French, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, chronicles the action with vivid power: Wild elephants soaring above the Atlantic on their way to captivity. Predators circling each other in a lethal mating dance. Primates plotting the overthrow of their king. 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. All of it comes to life in the book's four-legged characters. Even animal lovers will be startled by the emotional charge of these creatures' histories, which read as though they were co-written by Dickens and Darwin. "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.
Monday, Jul 12, 2010
In his new book, Thomas French goes behind the scenes at a Florida zoo to examine the paradox of zoos that draw in visitors with the beauty and wildness of animals -- but also contain that wildness for the sake of their visitors. More at NPR.org
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