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I came to THE FATE OF THE ELEPHANT by Douglas Chadwick because my daughter fell in love with Babar,
the King of the Elephants. Within a matter of days, Barney was completely
passe, my father was advising all his grandparenting peers to sell their
Barney stock, and my daughter was entranced with not just Babar but all
elephants. Seeing through her eyes, I learned how pervasive elephants are
in our culture. To name only a few examples, she has pointed out to me
in the last six months that elephants appear on wall hangings, on National
Geographic specials, on tea services, on "Entertainment Tonight" playing
soccer, on piggy banks, on the signs outside Pinball Pete's video arcade
in downtown Ann Arbor, and in a half-inch square on the bottom right
corner of page 657 of the J.C. Penney catalog.
It was in this context that I read THE FATE OF THE ELEPHANTS and realized
that elephants are far nearer to extinction than I had complacently
believed. I had been taking their existence for granted. Douglas H.
Chadwick's fine book made me realize I was wrong, and, moreover, that far
reaching changes will be needed in human society worldwide if elephants
are ever again to flourish.
The fundamental problem, I learned, is that elephants, like humans, are
large, social mammals. They need a lot of range to live in, and they
learn. Unfortunately, they do not have enough room--Chadwick reports
that almost none of the existing wildlife preserves where elephants live
are big enough to sustain a viable population of elephants--and there is
nothing that they can learn that will teach them how to cope with the land
use pressures caused by a human population that has increased fivefold
since AD 1800.
Chadwick's book does not inspire a great deal of optimism about the
elephant's prospects. He visits elephants all over the world--Kenya,
India, Malaysia--and everywhere finds shrinking populations, crowded by
human population growth, inadequately protected by wildlife preserves,
hunted cruelly for their ivory. He finds hope only in the elephants
themselves--in their warm family relationships, in their capacity for play
and delight--and in the human capacity to appreciate and love those
qualities. "I want to believe we will ultimately save elephants," he
writes, "and that we will do it because we acknowledge and accept their
commonality with us." I hope he is right.
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Editor's Recommendations, Summer 1996
In this inaugural edition of IBIC's Featured Books, I'd like to
draw your attention to several titles which have helped to shape my life
and thinking.
- When I was around fifteen, I came across Larry Niven and
Jerry Pournelle's science fiction novel, INFERNO. This '70s remake of Dante's
classic describes science fiction writer Allen Carpentier's
descent into Hell. It's still a very fresh, accessible take on
the classic. What a great movie it would make!
- The Niven/Pournelle INFERNO
immediately inspired me to read the original Divine Comedy.
I've read a number of translations over the years, but my
favorite is the one by Dorothy Sayers (INFERNO;
PURGATORY;
PARADISE). The notes
are excellent, and Sayers had such a knowledgeable and witty mind that reading
her prose is a pleasure in itself. (For those interested in a more contemporary translation, I should mention that Robert Pinsky received excellent notices for his 1995 THE
INFERNO OF DANTE : A NEW VERSE TRANSLATION; it's a very handsome book.)
- I also want to tell you about the late Henry Fairlie's THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS TODAY,
which probably did more than any other single book to galvanize me into a lifetime interest
in Christianity that led me, eventually, to faith. Ironic, because Fairlie was a self-proclaimed agnostic socialist! But
reading between the lines of this insightful and deeply feeling book, one realizes
that the love of God cannot have been far from Fairlie's heart.
- Finally, I should draw to your attention a more recent
acquisition, the very handsome NIV
STUDY BIBLE (10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION) from Zondervan, indexed and bonded in leather in
IBIC's theme color, burgundy (black
and brown
are also available). The notes to this Bible are amazing. They
appear to provide you with a very substantial portion of what you need to
know to have an intelligent layman's appreciation of the
linguistic and historical issues involved in understanding
Scripture.
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