Customer Reviews

Coming of Age With Elephants: A Memoir

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When I finished reading this book, it made me burst into tears...for such a long time, I've never read a book that was so touching and unforgettable. I love elephants so much and after reading this book. It bring me more courage to boycott those merchants who sell ivory......very impressive work and worthy of reading again and again...

This is a well-written and wonderfully insightful glance into the lives of elephants. If you are interesting in learning more about the hidden lives of elephants this is the book. Her story was both enthralling and insightful. I salute her for her work in getting the elephant listed on the endangered list; trying to prevent the slide of elephants into possible extinction. I cried when the elephants gave her a welcoming ceremony when she returned from a long departure. Thanks. A must read for all!

I enjoyed this book very much! I learned alot about elephants and their habitat. I feel I got to know the elephants personally from the info and stories that Joyce gave on all of them. I feel this book will give a reader insight on the elephants,lives,loves and servival.

I just finished the book and thoroughly enjoyed it. Joyce Poole blends delightful anecdotes of her interactions with elephants, her scientific findings, and her work to stem the tide of elephant poaching with the joys, heartbreaks, sacrifices, and harrowing experiences of a single woman living and working in Africa.

Coming of Age With Elephants: A Memoir
This book is an incredible portrait of the African elephants' struggle for survival against poachers and burgeoning human populations. Dr. Joyce Poole is a determined woman who began research studies of the African elephant - its intelligence, physiology, social structures, and migration habits in the midst of much political apathy, greed, and lawlessness covering three decades. Dr. Joyce Poole's long-term observation of the elephants in Kenya tell the story of a dedicated individual whose discoveries shed much light about the behavioral aspects of Loxodanta Africana, and also helped bring world attention to the disgraceful, unabated elephant poaching practices in these lands. I remained on the edge of my seat while reading this book, completing it in just days. If you have a special place in your heart for elephants and the CONSERVATION of all wildlife, please read this book. It will captivate you and also fill-in-the-blanks on a historical level as to the herculean efforts of noted conservationists and animal researchers of all time. Hoorah for this woman who stood her ground with the past Kenyan bureaucracy, cultural unawareness, and mores of the times to conduct research. This true account reveals Dr. Joyce Poole's inspiration to help the threatened status of the largest land mammal on earth. Her efforts continue today ("Elephant Voices"). I had the recent opportunity to meet her during a three-day elephant welfare conference (pawsweb.org) . I listened to her profound discussions of these magnificent animals in peril. "Joyce, knowledge & compassion be thy name!"

A lot of book is research and boring details. You learn stuff about elephants but not in the most exciting way.
Its alright but not a book I rushed to get back to. Buy it if you want research details and daily stuff..this book is for you. I hoped it would be more exciting to read. It is what it is. Informative though.

This book is mostly about Joyce Poole & her personal trials & tribulations. I did not learn anything new about elephants, but rather more about the lengths to which the author was driven to gain a prominent position in conservation bureaucracy;
for example, deeply resenting exclusion from all the globe-trotting conferencing going on around the plight of the elephant, & stung by the reason given that her research into elephant communications was irrelevant to conservation, she abandons the research, "betrays" her mentor -- Cynthia Moss -- & goes to count elephants in order to prove that the widespread slaughter of adults for their tusks leads to an overall decline in the group's reproductive rate. Wow. She provides a very good example of how money spent with good intentions is usually wasted on the recipients.