Love, War and Circuses: The age-old relationship between elephants and humans by Eric Scigliano, Houghton Mifflin, $24, ISBN 0618015833 Review by Adrian Barnett
THERE鈥橲 something about elephants that appeals to the human psyche. Even imperial Rome鈥檚 hardened games-watchers objected to the killing of elephants in their gladiatorial arenas. Today鈥檚 African and Asian duo are last of a long and diverse line: 20 million years in the making, it has included 160 separate species, ranging from the ultra-odd and nearly unpronounceable Stegatetrabeladon to Malta鈥檚 dwarf elephant, just a metre tall.
Love, War and Circuses is written in a warm, smooth and gently humorous style that benefits from Scigliano鈥檚 many years as a journalist. His experience at wrapping facts for easy communication means that dates, numbers and nuggets of information are presented in a thoroughly unfussy way that intrigues and informs rather than overwhelms. Whether he is talking about elephants in pre-Hindu creation myths or the statistics of the ivory trade, minutiae are never allowed to interrupt the narrative flow. You might get caught now and again in fascinating informational eddies, but you鈥檒l never get marooned in the backwaters of self-indulgent tedium.
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There is wonderful stuff here. Scigliano has clearly done his groundwork, whether it be trudging to Burmese logging camps, scouring libraries, examining netsuke or talking to disaffected circus workers. Elephants in war, zoos and the wild are all described in loving detail with an abundance of telling quotes and stories.
These range from elephants鈥� liabilities as an engine of war (a panicked pachyderm crushes indiscriminately), to the sad tale of a faithful elephant who, waiting for his absent trainer, burnt to death in a circus fire.
This rich mix shows the complexity of human-elephant interactions, the profound influence elephants have had on human culture and how squirm-inducingly abusive the human response to their trust has generally been. One can do little but agree with one retired keeper that 鈥渋f human beings were better than they are, they鈥檇 be like elephants鈥�.