Behemoth : the history of the elephant in America / Ronald B. Tobias.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tobias, Ronald B., 1946-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Captive elephants--United States--History.

Captive elephants.

History.

United States.

Physical Description:

xiv, 491 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Harper Perennial, [2013]

Summary:

In the two hundred years since their arrival in America, elephants have worked on farms, mills, mines, and railroads, in Hollywood, and in professional baseball. They've contributed to the national discourse on civil rights, immigration, politics, and capitalism. They became so deeply ingrained in the American way that they were once accorded the rights of American citizenship, including the right to vote and the right to provide testimony under oath-and they have incurred brutal punishments when convicted of human crimes. In Behemoth, Ronald B. Tobias has written the first comprehensive history of the elephant in America. As tragic as it is comic, this enthralling chronicle traces this animal's indelible footprint on American culture. Book jacket.

Contents:

Seeing the elephant

The unfortunate man who won an elephant in a raffle

Race to the White House

The voyages of Columbus

Romeo and Juliet, an American tragedy

Amok

Farming with elephants

Jumbo nation

Jumbo saves the Brooklyn Bridge

The skeleton and the manikin

White elephants

Elephant bizarre

Born in the USA

Matriarch

AC/DC

Circus day, Butte, Montana, 23 August 1900

Elephant baseball

A lynching in Tennessee

How Jumbo got his shnozz

Secret agents

Seeing the digital elephant.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 441-491).

ISBN:

9780062244857

006224485X

OCLC:

852031125