Love, War and Circuses [Hardcover]

Eric Scigliano (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 19, 2004

For millennia, people all over the world have revered, adored and exploited elephants. In Thailand, a pregnant woman ducks under an elephant's belly in hopes of having an easy delivery; a tycoon builds an elephant-shaped skyscraper; and pirate loggers feed amphetamines to their elephants to make them haul backbreaking loads. In India, milling worshippers dance with gilded tuskers at ecstatic temple festivals. From the steppes of Siberia to America's prairies, scientists have proposed restoring lost ecosystems by reintroducing the elephants and mammoths that once ruled them. And generation after generation of readers have delighted in Babar, Horton and Dumbo. In a kaleidoscopic account rich in historic lore, surprising science and exotic adventure, Eric Scigliano traces an age-old, extraordinary relationship between species and shows how it still haunts and inspires us today. He explains how elephants may have been 'nursemaids' to human evolution and how they shaped history, art, religion, and popular culture as no other animals have. He joins a gruelling chase after crop-raiding rogues in Sri Lanka and probes the bitter battle over the roles of elephants in zoos and circuses, revealing the enduring ecological importance and mythic fascination of these endangered giants.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The long history of human-elephant interaction has been a tug-of-war between adoration and abuse, as Scigliano's richly informative work ably demonstrates. Investigating the affinity that people around the world hold for these creatures, freelance writer Scigliano posits that humans may have more in common with elephants than any species other than apes. He explains how proto-man may even owe its descent from the trees to the world-changing power of elephants' ancestors. Elephants are second only to humans in their ability to transform the landscape around them and historically have spread over as much ground as we have. The author also notes that human life spans are similar to those of elephants. Early Europeans held the same racial prejudices against the African species as they did the humans of that continent, and the process of acquiring ivory helped usher in the slave trade. While pachyderms have been used in war and sent between nations as tokens of peace, they are now corralled in zoos and circuses, which, as much as they entertain, have sparked protests over animal abuse. In this clear and enjoyable work, Scigliano nicely balances this complex relationship using anecdotes from science and history, personal experience and research; he presents the many arguments of the fight for elephants' survival, spelling out the various positions taken by both supporters and detractors.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

This book is not so much about how humans have affected elephants but about how elephants have affected humans. Though he focuses more on Asian elephants--owing to the intimate relationship that 4,000 years of trapping and taming have created between humans and this species--Scigliano also discusses the wilder African elephants and the extinct mastodons and mammoths. Divided into five broad sections, the text examines all sides of humans' connection with proboscideans. Comparing the ivory trade and the trade in teak (which is harvested by elephants), Scigliano shows the devastating effect on the environment caused by overexploitation. The presence of elephants in circuses, both Roman (in which they were killed) and modern (in which they work and perform), demonstrates the dual emotions humans have always felt regarding elephants. Their treatment in zoos, and the attempts to breed them in captivity, bring the human-elephant bond into the twenty-first century. This eminently readable book boasts more than 40 pages of notes and bibliography. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (January 19, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0747569258
• ISBN-13: 978-0747569251
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,040,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elephants, but Mostly Humans and Elephants, July 9, 2002

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Love, War, and Circuses: The Age-Old Relationship Between Elephants and Humans (Hardcover)

Elephants are special. I bet you know someone who collects elephant sculptures and pictures. (If not, perhaps you know a Republican.) Elephants are the number one attraction in the circus, something that circus managers realize very well. Pandas might be a bigger draw at zoos, but they are really hard to get, while there are plenty of zoo elephants. Many people worship Ganesha the elephant god, and others have a soft spot for Horton or Babar. They are big, which always impresses humans; but we are not equally impressed by, say, giraffes. Despite their size, elephants are relentlessly cute; they are obviously intelligent and active, and those trunks do impish and clever things. They are social beings among themselves, and they do form important bonds with humans; though it is an exaggeration that they never forget, they do have capacity to remember those who treated them well and ill, for a long time. It is the bonds with humans that Eric Scigliano treats in _Love, War, and Circuses: The Age-Old Relationship Between Elephants and Humans_ (Houghton Mifflin), a book that well captures the awe, delight, and sorrow we hold for the pachyderms among us.

Scigliano confesses himself addicted to "elephalia," and the evidence is all here. He has traveled to distant lands, and to zoos and circuses to learn about the captive version. Scigliano's book winds up being an amiable miscellany of elephant lore. There is the Bangkok developer who built a skyscraper in the shape of a deco cartoon of an elephant. There are other smaller elephant buildings as novelty architecture in, say, Coney Island. There has been a ballet for elephants, the Circus Polka, and before you think that this was some seedy novelty act, the choreography was by George Balanchine, and the music by Igor Stravinsky. It ran for a season in 1942. Elephants in Kenya dig deep caves to get to the salt. Others dig wells, which benefit all the animals around. But elephants have not generally fared well at the hands of the humans who ostensibly adore them. Thai elephants, for instance, are worked illegally on protected reserves, and because the furtive work has to be done with speed, it is literally done with speed; the elephants are tanked up on amphetamines to work all through the night (whereas a three to five hour period is considered the maximum safe working day). Circuses and zoos may try to treat elephants humanely, and perhaps are better at it than they used to be, but some of the horror stories here are truly disheartening. The big beasts need plenty of room, and simply cannot get it in captivity; and there are fewer wilds for them to return to, as farming takes over their lands.

There are good conservation programs in elephant homelands, and Scigliano makes the case that the efforts now going to breed and raise elephants in captivity would be better directed to indigenous conservation. There are other things we could do, but it will take the humans to get involved and do them. This may be a book about elephants, but it is also specifically about humans who supposedly care about them. Scigliano's book tackles all aspects of this puzzling relationship. "Each inquiry into the elephant-human tangle leads to paradox, even after thousands of years of undomesticated domestic partnership. While we prop up our civilizations, literatures, and faiths upon its broad back, the animal remains untamed, and in many ways unknown." His valuable book can help us understand how important elephants have been to us, and how impoverished the world will be if they are not given the room they need.

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Strip away the journalistic fluff and its a good book, December 10, 2002

By 

Cybamuse (Fuzzy Europe) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love, War, and Circuses: The Age-Old Relationship Between Elephants and Humans (Hardcover)

Scigliano makes no bones about the fact this book is more about Asian elephants than their popular big-eared African counterparts. Tragically, this must have meant with the dearth of literature on Asian elephants, the first half was his own compilation - and it was written in that exasperating journalistic style of starting in the middle, dribbling to the end and then abruptly bouncing to the beginning and drifting back to the starting point. This meant reading about 20 pages before realising that actually, some interesting stuff had been said.

Fortunately, the 2nd half of the book picked up as it focused more on the modern day treatment of elephants, which I suspect there is a lot more information already compiled. So, around the time we begin to learn about the history of elephants in circuses in America, the book suddenly takes a quantum leap in readibility and was thoroughly enjoyable until the end. In all due fairness, Scigliano really tries to present a fair view, but in the end, you just can't. The fact of the matter is, humans are mistreating elephants (and any giant wild mammal for that matter!) and many people appear to blind to it - delibrately. I felt in the end, Scigliano had made up for the awful rambling start and successfully turned me into a raging environmentalist - albeit, I am now more concerned for the plight of ALL wild mammals as ALL are threatened from habitat destruction by mankind!

1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provides a special focus on elephant/human relationships, August 8, 2002

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love, War, and Circuses: The Age-Old Relationship Between Elephants and Humans (Hardcover)

People have adored and used elephants for hundreds of years: this provides a special focus on these elephant/human relationships, explaining how elephants may have contributed to human evolution and how the elephant's image continues to inspire popular culture. Add scientific facts about elephants and details on the author's own travels to view them and you have an intriguing, wellrounded blend of insights.