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Elements of French Deaf Heritage
by Harlan Lane Ulf HedbergFrench Deaf culture is regarded as a major influence on the formation of other Deaf cultures around the world, notably American Deaf culture. In Elements of French Deaf Heritage, Ulf Hedberg and Harlan Lane document the development of Deaf culture in France by way of Deaf schools, Deaf associations, private and professional networks, publishing, and the arts. This highly visual work captures these forces from the late 18th century through the end of the 19th century, when cultural formation began to shift to cultural maintenance. Encyclopedic in scope, this examination of the evolution of Deaf ethnicity in France aims to disseminate an extensive amount of archival information, now available for the first time in the English language.
Elements of Libertarian Leadership: Notes on the Theory, Methods, and Practice of Freedom
by Leonard E. ReadIn this book, first published in 1962, the author and founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, Leonard E. Read, skilfully organizes his numerous, previously published FEE materials into a single, usable manual “for those who would give liberty a hand.”“The emphasis in this volume is on methodology. Assuming an individual has mastered the philosophical aspects of freedom, what can he do about it? With whom does he work? What are his limitations? His potentialities?”—Leonard E. Read, Foreword
Elements of Mind
by Walter H. HuntA doctor in Victorian India who performs surgery using mesmerism and drawing power from an artifact commits suicide before delivering the artifact to Rev. William Davey at the Committee of English Mesmerists, prompting Davey on a quest. Davey uncovers much more than just an artifact. The chthonoi, ancient, banished, elemental spirits now seek to open the glass Door and reassert themselves in the word of man.
Elements of Parliamentary Debate: A Guide to Public Argument
by Lawrence Galizio Trischa KnappElements of Parliamentary Debate: A Handbook is the first complete guide available to students on parliamentary debate. The brief handbook covers the basics of parliamentary debate in an easy-to-use and flexible format. Topics covered include debate preparation, resolution analysis, case construction, refutation, argumentation, and delivery and adjudication. As a text or supplement, Elements of Parliamentary Debate offers a handy reference guide to students, instructors and coaches interested in, or now practicing, parliamentary debate.
Elen: For Camelot's Honor (The Queens of Camelot #2)
by Sarah ZettelIn this romantic fantasy from the award-winning author of Reclamation, a Welsh chieftain’s daughter and an Arthurian knight battle a vile sorceress. Steel and sorcery collide in this epic series featuring the women of Camelot. When treachery and violence destroy Elen’s homeland, a power begins to rise inside her. But it will take more than that untested magic to avenge her family, unite her people, and reclaim their land. Her enemy receives power from an evil source: the wicked sorceress Morgaine LeFay, who will stop at nothing to destroy King Arthur and his knights of Camelot. And she plans to use Elen to work for her own vile purpose. The thought of Elen in danger stirs something in the heart of Sir Geraint. Quiet and stalwart, he has always remembered the warmth they once shared. He will do anything to help her, even traveling undercover into enemy territory, where his martial skill and the love he shares with Elen will be put to the ultimate test . . . Praise for Elen: For Camelot’s Honor “Lyrical, heartwarming, and engaging.” —Explorations “Fine characterizations, lyrical writing, and intricate plotting make for a spellbinding journey.” —BookLoons Reviews
Elena
by Thomas H. CookA brother recalls the magnificent life of his sister, the greatest writer of her ageA launch party is underway for a hotly anticipated biography, the life story of Elena Franklin. As a young woman, Elena was one of the most promising literary talents of the 1920s, and over the years her legend grew. Her biographer, Martha Farrell, has combed through all the evidence of Elena&’s genius and passion, from her early years in New York to her expatriate life in Paris. The result is a monumental work – but among the party&’s crowd is the man who knows the book is an empty shell. Only William, Elena&’s brother, knew the truth about the famed author. Martha&’s flawed biography spurs his memory, and he recalls how the temperamental baby grew into a legend. He knew Elena&’s hidden pain, shared their family secrets, and draws his own portrait of the troubled soul that lay behind her artistic gifts.
Elena Holmberg. La mujer que sabía demasiado: El crimen que desnuda la interna de la dictadura militar
by Andrea BasconiEl caso Holmberg desnuda la historia de una víctima poco usual para ladictadura militar: ella era una de ellos. «Ando en problemas con los marinos del ministerio», le dijo ElenaHolmberg a su hermano, unos días antes de que su cuerpo aparecieraflotando en el río Luján, a la altura de Tigre. Elena era diplomática decarrera, hija de una familia patricia argentina y prima hermana del expresidente de facto Alejandro Agustín Lanusse. Una mujer de derechaconservadora confesa. Antiperonista y contraria a cualquiermanifestación de izquierda. Trabajó desde 1972 en la embajada argentinaen París, donde más tarde estuvo al mando del Centro Piloto, hasta queen los últimos meses de 1978 se ordenó sorpresivamente su traslado aBuenos Aires.Esta apasionante investigación periodística de Andrea Basconi, narradacomo si fuera una novela, reconstruye qué sucedió desde que a Elena laobligaron a subir a un Chevy que huyó a toda velocidad por la calleUruguay.¿Qué sabía Elena que era tan comprometedor para el almirante Massera? ¿Hasta dónde llegaron las esquirlas del delirio de poder y las internasde la última dictadura militar? Si Massera no se había reunido con lacúpula montonera y no les había pagado un millón de dólares paragarantizarse una alianza que terminara por destrozar a su enemigoíntimo, como sostenía Elena, ¿por qué los marinos la eliminaron luego delas reuniones de la funcionaria con sus confidentes?
Elena, Princesa of the Periphery: Disney’s Flexible Latina Girl (Latinidad: Transnational Cultures in the United States)
by Diana Leon-BoysIn the summer of 2016, Disney introduced its first Latina princess, Elena of Avalor. Princesa of the Periphery explores this Disney property using multiple case studies to understand its approach to girlhood and Latinidad. Following the circuit of culture model, author Diana Leon-Boys teases out moments of complex negotiations by Disney, producers, and audiences as they navigate Elena’s circulation. Case studies highlight how a flexible Latinidad is deployed through corporate materials, social media pages, theme park experiences, and the television series to create a princess who is both marginal to Disney’s normative vision of princesshood and central to Disney’s claims of diversification. This multi-layered analysis of Disney’s mediated Latina girlhood interrogates the complex relationship between the U.S.’s largest ethnic minority and a global conglomerate that stands in for the U.S. on the global stage.
Eleni
by Nicholas GageIn 1948, in a Greek mountain village, Eleni Gatzoyiannis was arrested, tortured and shot. Her crime had been to help her children to escape from the Communist guerrillas during the Greek civil war who were abducting children and sending them to camps behind the Iron Curtain. Her son, Nicholas Gage, was then eight years old. Eventually he reached America and joined his father who was working there and sending money back to his family. In America Gage grew up to become one of The New York Times' best investigative reporters. He returned to Greece in 1977 as a Times correspondent and, gradually but increasingly obsessively, he began to reconstruct his mother's life and death. By the time he was finished he was ready to confront both his mother's executioners and his own memories. Eleni, an intensely moving and compelling book, is the fruit of his search for the truth.
Eleonora d'Aquitania: Edizione per studenti e docenti (Le leggendarie donne della storia mondiale #13)
by Laurel A. RockefellerAliénor era la donna più desiderata nel Medioevo – e non solo a causa della sua bellezza. Figlia maggiore del duca Guglielmo X d’Aquitania, ne ereditò, a quindici anni, l’immenso patrimonio e nello stesso anno, venne incoronata regina dei Franchi. Ma la bella duchessa non ebbe molta fortuna in amore, nonostante due matrimoni e dieci figli. I trovatori ne cantarono ampiamente la bellezza e la dilettarono con le gesta di re Artù ed i suoi cavalieri della tavola rotonda. Segnò il destino di due imperi emergenti e fece dell’Aquitania un fedele alleato dell’Inghilterra. La sua legenda perdura fino ai giorni nostri, questo libro racconta la sua emozionante storia. L'edizione per studenti e docenti è corredata da domande d'approfondimento alla fine di ogni capitolo.
Elephant Bill
by Lt.-Col. J. H. Williams O.B.E.A book comes along like this once in a lifetime. You read it as a small child, or even an adult, and never forget the images it conjures up of a wonderful Englishman who lives in the mysterious forests of faraway Burma and of the kind native people who teach him about their lovely country. But most of all, you never forget the elephants! For this is a story about those magnificent creatures. Though he was officially known as Lt. Colonel J. H. Williams, the author was known to the world at large as Elephant Bill. That is because he spent 25 years living with the elephants in the mountains and forests of Burma. There he trained them to haul teak logs out of the isolated jungles.Yet this is also a story of great courage, because when the Second World War struck it also came to Burma. The Japanese Imperial Army planned to confiscate the Burmese elephants, drafting them to make the bridges and railways they needed to invade India. When he learned of these plans to put his beloved animals to a war-like purpose, Elephant Bill knew what had to be done. The mighty kings of the jungle had to be evacuated to safety.This is thus the story not only of the peaceful days in the jungle, starting in 1921, but also the story of the largest elephant rescue in history. It tells the amazing account of how Elephant Bill, along with his friends and family, rode 45 of the great beasts across the mountains of Burma, before reaching safety in faraway India.A classic then. A classic now. Elephant Bill is a blessing to any library and a literary treasure.
Elephant Butte Dam
by Cindy Carpenter Sherry FletcherOn November 18, 1904, engineer B.M. Hall submitted his final report to the 12th National Irrigation Congress in El Paso, Texas. He concluded that the ideal location for a dam and reservoir would be a site in western New Mexico. A congressional act of February 25, 1905, authorized the construction of Elephant Butte Dam, the first civil engineering structure concerned with international allocation of water. Part of the Rio Grande Project, the dam and its reservoir would provide irrigation water for farmers along the Rio Grande in New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. Today, Elephant Butte Dam is designated as a National Historical Engineer Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the oldest national professional engineering society in the United States. The area is home to Elephant Butte Lake State Park, where camping, fishing, and water sports are enjoyed by both residents and tourists.
Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II
by Vicki Constantine CrokeThe remarkable story of James Howard “Billy” Williams, whose uncanny rapport with the world’s largest land animals transformed him from a carefree young man into the charismatic war hero known as Elephant Bill<P> Billy Williams came to colonial Burma in 1920, fresh from service in World War I, to a job as a “forest man” for a British teak company. Mesmerized by the intelligence, character, and even humor of the great animals who hauled logs through the remote jungles, he became a gifted “elephant wallah.” Increasingly skilled at treating their illnesses and injuries, he also championed more humane treatment for them, even establishing an elephant “school” and “hospital.” In return, he said, the elephants made him a better man. The friendship of one magnificent tusker in particular, Bandoola, would be revelatory. In Elephant Company, Vicki Constantine Croke chronicles Williams’s growing love for elephants as the animals provide him lessons in courage, trust, and gratitude.<P> But Elephant Company is also a tale of war and daring. When Imperial Japanese forces invaded Burma in 1942, Williams joined the elite Force 136, the British dirty tricks department, operating behind enemy lines. His war elephants would carry supplies, build bridges, and transport the sick and elderly over treacherous mountain terrain. Now well versed in the ways of the jungle, an older, wiser Williams even added to his stable by smuggling more elephants out of Japanese-held territory. As the occupying authorities put a price on his head, Williams and his elephants faced his most perilous test. In a Hollywood-worthy climax, Elephant Company, cornered by the enemy, attempted a desperate escape: a risky trek over the mountainous border to India, with a bedraggled group of refugees in tow. Elephant Bill’s exploits would earn him top military honors and the praise of famed Field Marshal Sir William Slim.<P> Part biography, part war epic, and part wildlife adventure, Elephant Company is an inspirational narrative that illuminates a little-known chapter in the annals of wartime heroism.
Elephant Complex
by John GimletteNo one sees the world quite like John Gimlette. As The New York Times once noted, "he writes with enormous wit, indignation, and a heightened sense of the absurd." Writing for both the adventurer and the armchair traveler, he has an eye for unusually telling detail, a sense of wonder, and compelling curiosity for the inside story. This time, he travels to Sri Lanka, a country only now emerging from twenty-six years of civil war. Delving deep into the nation's story, Gimlette provides us with an astonishing, multifaceted portrait of the island today. His travels reveal the country as never before. Beginning in the exuberant capital, Colombo ("a hint of anarchy everywhere"), he ventures out in all directions: to the dry zones where the island's 5,800 wild elephants congregate around ancient reservoirs; through cinnamon country with its Portuguese forts; to the "Bible Belt" of Buddhism--the tsunami-ravaged southeast coast; then up into the great green highlands ("the garden in the sky") and Kandy, the country's eccentric, aristocratic Shangri-la. Along the way, a wild and often desperate history takes shape, a tale of great colonies (Arab, Portuguese, British, and Dutch) and of the cultural divisions that still divide this society. Before long, we're in Jaffna and the Vanni, crucibles of the recent conflict. These areas--the hottest, driest, and least hospitable--have been utterly devastated by war and are only now struggling to their feet.But this is also a story of friendship and remarkable encounters. In the course of his journey, Gimlette meets farmers, war heroes, ancient tribesmen, world-class cricketers, terrorists, a former president, old planters, survivors of great massacres--and perhaps some of their perpetrators. That's to say nothing of the island's beguiling fauna: elephants, crocodiles, snakes, storks, and the greatest concentration of leopards on Earth. Here is a land of extravagant beauty and profound devastation, of ingenuity and catastrophe, possessed of both a volatile past and an uncertain future--a place capable of being at once heavenly and hellish--all brought to vibrant, fascinating life here on the page.From the Hardcover edition.
Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka
by John GimletteNo one sees the world quite like John Gimlette. As The New York Times once noted, “he writes with enormous wit, indignation, and a heightened sense of the absurd.” Writing for both the adventurer and the armchair traveler, he has an eye for unusually telling detail, a sense of wonder, and compelling curiosity for the inside story. This time, he travels to Sri Lanka, a country only now emerging from twenty-six years of civil war. Delving deep into the nation’s story, Gimlette provides us with an astonishing, multifaceted portrait of the island today. His travels reveal the country as never before. Beginning in the exuberant capital, Colombo (“a hint of anarchy everywhere”), he ventures out in all directions: to the dry zones where the island’s 5,800 wild elephants congregate around ancient reservoirs; through cinnamon country with its Portuguese forts; to the “Bible Belt” of Buddhism—the tsunami-ravaged southeast coast; then up into the great green highlands (“the garden in the sky”) and Kandy, the country’s eccentric, aristocratic Shangri-la. Along the way, a wild and often desperate history takes shape, a tale of great colonies (Arab, Portuguese, British, and Dutch) and of the cultural divisions that still divide this society. Before long, we’re in Jaffna and the Vanni, crucibles of the recent conflict. These areas—the hottest, driest, and least hospitable—have been utterly devastated by war and are only now struggling to their feet.But this is also a story of friendship and remarkable encounters. In the course of his journey, Gimlette meets farmers, war heroes, ancient tribesmen, world-class cricketers, terrorists, a former president, old planters, survivors of great massacres—and perhaps some of their perpetrators. That’s to say nothing of the island’s beguiling fauna: elephants, crocodiles, snakes, storks, and the greatest concentration of leopards on Earth. Here is a land of extravagant beauty and profound devastation, of ingenuity and catastrophe, possessed of both a volatile past and an uncertain future—a place capable of being at once heavenly and hellish—all brought to vibrant, fascinating life here on the page.From the Hardcover edition.
Elephant Run
by Roland SmithIn 1941, bombs drop from the night skies of London, demolishing the apartment Nick Freestone lives in with his mother. Deciding the situation in England is too unstable, Nick's mother sends him to live with his father in Burma, hoping he will be safer living on the family's teak plantation. But as soon as Nick arrives, trouble erupts in the remote Burmese elephant village. Japanese soldiers invade, and Nick's father is taken prisoner. Nick is left stranded on the plantation, forced to work as a servant to the new rulers. As life in the village grows more dangerous for Nick and his young friend, Mya, they plan their daring escape. Setting off on elephant back, they will risk their lives to save Nick's father and Mya's brother from a Japanese POW camp.
Elephant Slaves & Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Animals, History, Culture)
by Louise E. RobbinsThis lively history “adds a new dimension to our understanding of 18th-century France” by exploring the Parisian fashion of importing exotic animals (American Historical Review).In 1775, a visitor to Laurent Spinacuta’s Grande Ménagerie at the annual winter fair in Paris would have seen two tigers, several kinds of monkeys, an armadillo, an ocelot, and a condor—in all, forty-two live animals. In the streets of the city, one could observe performing elephants and a fighting polar bear. Those looking for unusual pets could purchase parrots, flying squirrels, and capuchin monkeys. The royal menagerie at Versailles displayed lions, cranes, an elephant, a rhinoceros, and a zebra, which in 1760 became a major court attraction.For Enlightenment-era Parisians, exotic animals piqued scientific curiosity and conveyed social status. Their variety and accessibility were a boon for naturalists like Buffon, author of Histoire naturelle. Louis XVI use his menagerie to demonstrate his power, while critics saw his caged animals as metaphors of slavery and oppression. In her engaging account, Robbins considers nearly every aspect of France’s obsession with exotic fauna, from the animals’ transportation and care to the inner workings of the oiseleurs’ (birdsellers’) guild. Based on wide-ranging research, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots offers a major contribution to the history of human-animal relations, eighteenth-century culture, and French colonialism.
Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Animals, History, Culture)
by Louise E. RobbinsIn 1775, a visitor to Laurent Spinacuta's Grande Ménagerie at the annual winter fair in Paris would have seen two tigers, several kinds of monkeys, an armadillo, an ocelot, and a condor—in all, forty-two live animals. In Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots, Louise Robbins explains that exotic animals from around the world were common in eighteenth-century Paris. In the streets of the city, residents and visitors could observe performing elephants and a fighting polar bear. Those looking for unusual pets could purchase parrots, flying squirrels, and capuchin monkeys. The royal menagerie at Versailles displayed lions, cranes, an elephant, a rhinoceros, and a zebra, which in 1760 became a major court attraction.For Enlightenment-era Parisians, exotic animals both piqued scientific curiosity and conveyed social status. Their availability was a boon for naturalists like Buffon, author of the best-selling Histoire naturelle, who observed unusual species in a variety of locations around the city. Louis XVI saw his menagerie as a manifestation of his power and funded its upkeep accordingly, while critics used the caged animals as metaphors of slavery and political oppression amidst the growing political turmoil. In her engaging and often surprising account, Robbins considers nearly every aspect of France's obsession with exotic fauna, from the vast literature on exotic animals and the inner workings of the oiseleurs' (birdsellers') guild to how the animals were transported, housed, and cared for. Based on wide-ranging and imaginative research, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots stands as a major contribution to the history of human-animal relations, eighteenth-century culture, and French colonialism.
Elephant Trails: A History of Animals and Cultures (Animals, History, Culture)
by Nigel RothfelsWhy have elephants—and our preconceptions about them—been central to so much of human thought?From prehistoric cave drawings in Europe and ancient rock art in Africa and India to burning pyres of confiscated tusks, our thoughts about elephants tell a story of human history. In Elephant Trails, Nigel Rothfels argues that, over millennia, we have made elephants into both monsters and miracles as ways to understand them but also as ways to understand ourselves.Drawing on a broad range of sources, including municipal documents, zoo records, museum collections, and encounters with people who have lived with elephants, Rothfels seeks out the origins of our contemporary ideas about an animal that has been central to so much of human thought. He explains how notions that have been associated with elephants for centuries—that they are exceptionally wise, deeply emotional, and have a special understanding of death; that they never forget, are beloved of the gods, and suffer unusually in captivity; and even that they are afraid of mice—all tell part of the story of these amazing beings. Exploring the history of a skull in a museum, a photograph of an elephant walking through the American South in the early twentieth century, the debate about the quality of life of a famous elephant in a zoo, and the accounts of elephant hunters, Rothfels demonstrates that elephants are not what we think they are—and they never have been. Elephant Trails is a compelling portrait of what the author terms "our elephant."
Elephantine Revisited: New Insights into the Judean Community and Its Neighbors
by Margaretha FolmerThe Judean community at Elephantine has long fascinated historians of the Persian period. This book, with its stellar assemblage of important scholarly voices, provides substantive new insights and approaches that will advance the study of this well-known but not entirely understood community from fifth-century BCE Egypt. Since Bezalel Porten’s pioneering Archives from Elephantine, published in 1968, the discourse on the subject of the community of Elephantine during the Persian period has changed considerably, due to new data from excavations, the discovery and publication of previously unknown texts, and original scholarly insights and avenues of inquiry. Running the gamut from archaeological to linguistic investigations and encompassing legal, literary, religious, and other aspects of life in this Judean community, this volume stands at a crossroads of research that extends from Hebrew Bible studies to the history of early Jewish communities. It also features fourteen new Aramaic ostraca from Aswan. The volume will appeal to students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Judaism, as well as to a wider audience of Egyptologists, Semitists, and specialists in ancient Near Eastern studies. In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume include Annalisa Azzoni, Bob Becking, Alejandro F. Botta, Lester L. Grabbe, Ingo Kottsieper, Reinhard G. Kratz, André Lemaire, Hélène Nutkowicz, Beatrice von Pilgrim, Cornelius von Pilgrim, Bezalel Porten, Ada Yardeni, and Ran Zadok. Moreover, a video recording of an interview conducted with Porten on his long career in Elephantine studies accompanies the book through a link on the Eisenbrauns website.
Elephantine Revisited: New Insights into the Judean Community and Its Neighbors
by Margaretha FolmerThe Judean community at Elephantine has long fascinated historians of the Persian period. This book, with its stellar assemblage of important scholarly voices, provides substantive new insights and approaches that will advance the study of this well-known but not entirely understood community from fifth-century BCE Egypt. Since Bezalel Porten’s pioneering Archives from Elephantine, published in 1968, the discourse on the subject of the community of Elephantine during the Persian period has changed considerably, due to new data from excavations, the discovery and publication of previously unknown texts, and original scholarly insights and avenues of inquiry. Running the gamut from archaeological to linguistic investigations and encompassing legal, literary, religious, and other aspects of life in this Judean community, this volume stands at a crossroads of research that extends from Hebrew Bible studies to the history of early Jewish communities. It also features fourteen new Aramaic ostraca from Aswan. The volume will appeal to students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Judaism, as well as to a wider audience of Egyptologists, Semitists, and specialists in ancient Near Eastern studies. In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume include Annalisa Azzoni, Bob Becking, Alejandro F. Botta, Lester L. Grabbe, Ingo Kottsieper, Reinhard G. Kratz, André Lemaire, Hélène Nutkowicz, Beatrice von Pilgrim, Cornelius von Pilgrim, Bezalel Porten, Ada Yardeni, and Ran Zadok. Moreover, a video recording of an interview conducted with Porten on his long career in Elephantine studies accompanies the book through a link on the Eisenbrauns website.
Elephants & Kings: An Environmental History
by Thomas R. TrautmannBecause of their enormous size, elephants have long been irresistible for kings as symbols of their eminence. In early civilizations—such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization, and China—kings used elephants for royal sacrifice, spectacular hunts, public display of live captives, or the conspicuous consumption of ivory—all of them tending toward the elephant’s extinction. The kings of India, however, as Thomas R. Trautmann shows in this study, found a use for elephants that actually helped preserve their habitat and numbers in the wild: war. Trautmann traces the history of the war elephant in India and the spread of the institution to the west—where elephants took part in some of the greatest wars of antiquity—and Southeast Asia (but not China, significantly), a history that spans 3,000 years and a considerable part of the globe, from Spain to Java. He shows that because elephants eat such massive quantities of food, it was uneconomic to raise them from birth. Rather, in a unique form of domestication, Indian kings captured wild adults and trained them, one by one, through millennia. Kings were thus compelled to protect wild elephants from hunters and elephant forests from being cut down. By taking a wide-angle view of human-elephant relations, Trautmann throws into relief the structure of India’s environmental history and the reasons for the persistence of wild elephants in its forests.
Elephants Can Remember: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition (Hercule Poirot Mysteries #36)
by Agatha ChristieA classic Hercule Poirot investigation, Agatha Christie’s Elephants Can Remember has the expert detective delving into an unsolved crime from the past involving the strange death of a husband and wife.Hercule Poirot stood on the clifftop. Here, many years earlier, there had been a fatal accident followed by the grisly discovery of two bodies—a husband and wife who had been shot dead.But who had killed whom? Was it a suicide pact? A crime of passion? Or cold-blooded murder? Poirot delves into the past and discovers that “old sins leave long shadows.”
Elephants and Ivory in China and Spain (Elements in the Global Middle Ages)
by John Beusterien Stephen WestThe Element provides a global history of ivory and elephants, acknowledging the individuality and dignity of the elephants that provided that ivory. Sections on China include the first translations of texts about the cultural importance of elephants and ivory in the Song Dynasty (960–1279) and an examination of an ivory stave (huban 笏板), crafted from an Asian elephant tusk (Elephas maximus), carried by officials in court and other formal rituals. Sections on Spain examine the value of ivory during the reign of King Alfonso X of Castille (1221–1284) and the Virxe Abrideira (ca. 1260–1275), an ivory Virgin and Child statuette owned by Queen Violante of Aragon (1236–1301), crafted from an African elephant tusk (Loxodonta africana). The Element concludes by offering a pedagogy from a comparative literature perspective about Sunjata (c.1226), an epic from the Mali empire in West Africa, an important source for thirteenth-century global ivory markets.
Elephants and Kings: An Environmental History
by Thomas R. TrautmannBecause of their enormous size, elephants have long been irresistible for kings as symbols of their eminence. In early civilizations--such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization, and China--kings used elephants for royal sacrifice, spectacular hunts, public display of live captives, or the conspicuous consumption of ivory--all of them tending toward the elephant's extinction. The kings of India, however, as Thomas R. Trautmann shows in this study, found a use for elephants that actually helped preserve their habitat and numbers in the wild: war. Trautmann traces the history of the war elephant in India and the spread of the institution to the west--where elephants took part in some of the greatest wars of antiquity--and Southeast Asia (but not China, significantly), a history that spans 3,000 years and a considerable part of the globe, from Spain to Java. He shows that because elephants eat such massive quantities of food, it was uneconomic to raise them from birth. Rather, in a unique form of domestication, Indian kings captured wild adults and trained them, one by one, through millennia. Kings were thus compelled to protect wild elephants from hunters and elephant forests from being cut down. By taking a wide-angle view of human-elephant relations, Trautmann throws into relief the structure of India's environmental history and the reasons for the persistence of wild elephants in its forests.