Historical Elephants

Jacob Jankowski reflects back on his wild and wondrous days with a circus. In the Depression Era, Jacob, finding himself parentless and penniless, joins the Benzini Brothers ‘Most Spectacular Show on Earth’. There he meets the freaks, grifters, and misfits that populate this world: Marlena...

The Karangalan family and their neighbors huddle for survival in the cellar of a house a few miles from Manila. Outside the safety of their little refuge the war rages on—fiery bombs torch the beautiful Filipino countryside, Japanese soldiers round up and interrogate innocent people, and from the hills guerillas wage a desperate campaign against the enemy. Inside the cellar, these men, women, and children put their hopes and dreams on hold as they wait out the war, only emerging to look for food, water, and medicine.

New from the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs (“A masterpiece of science writing.” —Washington Post) and “one of the stars of modern paleontology” (National Geographic), a sweeping and revelatory history of mammals, illuminating the lost story of...

A thrilling and moving tale about an extraordinary animal caught up in a very human war. Perfect for anyone who loved The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips or The Butterfly Lion… It’s 1945. Elizabeth's father is fighting with the German army on the eastern front. Her mother works at Dresden zoo...

In this moving fictional treatment of a Muslim woman's life, a personal and family crisis impells the heroine to reexamine traditional cultural attitudes toward women. Cast out and divorced by her husband, she finds herself in a strange new world. Both obstacles and support systems change as she actively participates in the struggle for Moroccan independence from France.

In the year 226 BCE, the young Carthaginian commander Hannibal Barca is given an unusual and dangerous assignment: train sixty elephants for war. These massive beasts must then be transported across the Mediterranean Sea to Iberia, where they will become living weapons in Carthage’s struggle against the fiercely independent tribes of the peninsula. Among the elephants is Obolus, the largest and most powerful of them all. Two unlikely companions—Liada and the brilliant young Tin Tin Ban Sunia—become essential to Obolus’s care and training, forming a bond with the giant animal that ...

Bestselling author and renowned professor Mary Karr offers a master class in the essential elements of great memoir—delivered with her signature wit, insight, and candor. Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of...

In 1551, King Joo III of Portugal gave Archduke Maximilian an unusual wedding present: an elephant named Solomon. In Jose Saramago's remarkable and imaginative retelling, Solomon and his keeper, Subhro, begin in dismal conditions, forgotten in a corner of the palace grounds.

Aiden Byrne, an Irish police officer posted to Madraspatnam and a loyal servant to the Crown and Queen Victoria, knows that there is nothing he need fear in this heat-blasted land. The year is 1878 and the south of India is in the grip of a devastating famine. But when Aiden encounters two...

By his longtime friend and a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, the definitive biography of Larry McMurtry, the legendary author and screenwriter of Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show, and Brokeback Mountain, who transformed our vision of the West. Before Larry McMurtry became one of the...

The circus promised thrills. Sometimes it delivered catastrophe instead. Step right up for the disasters the posters definitely did not advertise. STRANGE BUT TRUE: THE WEIRD HISTORY OF CIRCUS DISASTERS dives into the fires, train wrecks, runaway animals, collapsing tents, failed stunts, deadly falls, panicked crowds, and spectacularly bad days that followed the circus from town to town. These were enormous traveling shows built almost overnight, packed with wild animals, wooden railcars, canvas roofs, aerial performers, temporary grandstands, and thousands of spectators. Most days, ...

Aung lives in a small village in Burma (Malaysia) and spends his free time tending to the village elephants. Beyond his village, the world is at war, and invading Japanese troops are on their way.

Empires rise on the backs of kings, but Rome was carried through the ash by a family that refused to break. On the night Troy burned, a simple bronzesmith named Genucus rescued no gold or bronze plate. Instead, he caught his household Lar—a fist-sized terracotta god cracked against a falling doorframe—and fled into the dark with his wife and child. He did not know that his desperate run through the embers would begin an unbroken lineage spanning nine centuries, twenty-seven generations, and the bloodiest crucibles of Western antiquity. The Unbroken Line weaves an intimate, multi-...

When Oxford geology graduate Harry Brigandshaw arrives at Purbeck Manor in 1907, he brings with him the sun-scorched memories of Africa and dreams of mineral exploration. The ancient estate of the St Clair family—once lords of all they surveyed, now reduced to "genteel poverty"—becomes the backdrop for Harry’s journey into the heart of a fading aristocracy.

Faced with breast cancer, a phone call disrupts Ali’s morbid thoughts of suicide. Later that day, sorting through her grandmother’s attic, she comes across an old trunk, and inside, tucked into the folds of a quilt; she discovers a diary from 1861. Fascinated, she gets comfortable and begins to read… (1861) Seventeen-year-old Alexandria McLeod watches in dismay while her mother makes the decision that will change her life forever. After Alex’s Uncle is viciously maimed and her Aunt violated, Mama insists they must leave Missouri, now scavenged by marauders spat out from the budding ...

The Outsider is a no-holds-barred memoir by the original bad boy of tennis, Jimmy Connors. Connors ignited the tennis boom in the 1970s with his aggressive style of play, turning his matches with John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, and Ivan Lendl into prizefights. But it was his prolonged dedication to...

#1 SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE “A picaresque, swashbuckling adventure.”—The Washington Post Book World They’re an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of...

Due to horrible physical deformities, he spent much of his life as a fairground freak. He was hounded, persecuted, and starving, until his fortune changed and he was rescued, housed, and fed by the distinguished surgeon, Frederick Treves. The subject of several books, a Broadway hit, and a film, Joseph Merrick has become part of popular mythology. Here, in this fully revised edition containing much fresh information, are the true and un-romanticized facts of his life.

Elephants vs Warriors: An Epic Graphic Guide to History and Money is a detailed and politically neutral journey through the pivotal Battle of Al-Qadisiyyah, presented as a unique educational adventure. Moving beyond traditional textbooks, this work follows young Leo, the wise Professor Penny, and the magical golden coin, Dinar, as they witness a turning point in world history. This ancient military history book provides a tactical breakdown of how the highly disciplined Arabian forces, led by Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, faced the overwhelming might of the Sassanid Persian Empire’s armored war ...

El viaje del elefante no es un libro histórico, es una combinación de hechos reales e inventados que nos hace sentir la realidad y la ficción como una unidad indisoluble, como algo propio de la gran literatura. Una reflexión sobre la humanidad en la que el humor y la ironía, marcas de la implacable lucidez del autor, se unen a la compasión con la que José Saramago observa las flaquezas humana.