Jacob Shell. (2019). Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants. W. W. Norton & Company.

Jacob Shell. 2019. Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working With Elephants. W. W. Norton & Company.

Jacob Shell, Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working With Elephants. W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.

Jacob Shell. Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working With Elephants. W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.

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Giants of the Monsoon Forest

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1. • value: Southeast Asia
2. • value: natural science
3. • value: Political Geography
4. • value: Conservation
5. • value: logging
6. • value: wilderness
7. • value: rainforests
8. • value: Burma
9. • value: Evolution
10. • value: Indonesia
11. • value: mutualism
12. • value: Deforestation
13. • value: India
14. • value: animal intelligence
15. • value: teak
16. • value: elephantidae
17. • value: kachin rebels
18. • value: mutualistic relationship
19. • value: patkai

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Shell, Jacob
   • bioText: Jacob Shell is a professor of geography and urban studies at Temple University. He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
   • name: Jacob Shell

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2019-06-11T00:00:00-04:00

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title

Giants of the Monsoon Forest

fullDescription

"No one who loves elephants or how humans interact with wildlife should pass up Jacob Shell's remarkable book." —Dan Flores, author of Coyote America

Giants of the Monsoon Forest journeys deep into the mountainous rainforests of Burma and India to explore the world of teak logging elephants and their intriguing alliance with humans. Jacob Shell's narrative vividly depicts elephants' extraordinary intelligence, and the complicated bond with individual human riders, a partnership that can last for decades. Giants of the Monsoon Forest reveals an unexpected relationship between evolution in the natural world and political struggles in the human one, while considering how Asia's secret forest culture might offer a way to help protect the fragile spaces both elephants and humans need to survive.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Nikil Saval;New Yorker
   • content: A beautifully written travelogue.
2. • premium: False
   • source: Frans de Waal, author of Mama's Last Hug
   • content: The awe in which we hold elephants is amply fed by the stories and history in this fascinating book.
3. • premium: False
   • source: Barbara J. King;NPR
   • content: Shell's research is extensive and meticulous.
4. • premium: False
   • source: Tunku Varadarajan;Wall Street Journal
   • content: The greatest strength... is its author's clear-eyed pragmatism. Mr. Shell respects elephants without sentimentalizing them.
5. • premium: False
   • source: Yi-Fu Tuan, University of Wisconsin, author of Space and Place and Dominance & Affection: The Making of Pets
   • content: Human relations with animals have so often been brutally exploitative and cruel. At last, Giants of the Monsoon Forest describes a relationship with a fellow creature that—in Burma, at least—is more collegial rather than murderous or exploitative.
6. • premium: False
   • source: Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast
   • content: An urgent, impassioned, and important reminder that relations between humans and nonhumans need not and must not be as disastrously dislocated as they usually are; that human dignity is increased if we recognize the dignity of our nonhuman cousins, and dangerously diminished if we do not.
7. • premium: False
   • source: Rachel Love Nuwer;Undark
   • content: A deep dive into the surprisingly complex relationship between [elephants and humans].... Illuminating.
8. • premium: False
   • source: Jessica Bell Rizzolo;Science
   • content: Shell's narrative is skilled at sketching the sociological, geographic, and ethical complexities of human-elephant relationships.
9. • premium: False
   • source: Rachel Dwyer;Times Literary Supplement
   • content: Among the most enjoyable parts of the book are the stories of individual elephants, some of whom provided distinguished service to humans.... Highly readable.
10. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      April 29, 2019
      Shell (Transportation and Revolt), a geography professor at Temple University, provides a surprising look at an elephant-human “alliance” that seemingly benefits both species. Despite elephants never having been selectively bred, various East Asian cultures have, for millennia, used the animal’s intelligence, strength, and incredibly dexterous trunks by training them for important tasks that include hauling lumber and ferrying people across rough terrain or hazardous bodies of water. The elephants, amenable to following the directives of their drivers, or mahouts, and apparently empathetic (Shell cites an instance where a mother elephant carrying her calf across a river stopped to rescue a human who’d fallen in), have also proved lifesavers in natural disasters such as floods. Shell’s focus on these partially domesticated specimens breaks new ground in popular science treatments of the elephant, which are more commonly concerned with the better-known wild African variety. And his nuanced look at the mahout-elephant connection—the drivers work the animals during the day and then release them in the afternoon or evening, fetching the elephants again the following morning—allows him to showcase an unusually reciprocal relationship between humans and another species. Readers interested in animal intelligence and emotions, as well as how they are affected by contact with humans, will be spellbound by Shell’s thorough study.

11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      July 1, 2019
      

      Shell (geography and urban studies, Temple Univ., PA) has a keen interest in transportation systems. This interest has led him to study the relationship between humans and elephants. He focuses on the Indian-Burmese border, where between a third and a fourth of the estimated 40,000-50,000 remaining Asian elephants are worker elephants: helping humans with transportation of materials, fording treacherous flooded areas, and logging activities. Elephants have not been selectively bred as extensively as other working species such as dogs, mainly because their long life spans are not conducive to intensive genetic selection by humans. Shell explores the characteristics of elephants that have made them so adaptable and helpful to humans. Topics covered include how wild elephants are caught and trained, the utility and strength of the elephant trunk, and the historic heroic tales of elephants transporting humans away from dangerous places and through treacherous terrains. Shell argues that mahouts (professional elephant riders and handlers) are uniquely poised to help in the conservation efforts necessary to save this imperiled species. VERDICT This fascinating book explores the complex bond between elephants and humans, becoming part of the new ethno-elephantology research that has captivated scholars from many different disciplines.--Diana Hartle, Univ. of Georgia Science Lib., Athens

      Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

12. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      May 15, 2019
      Asian elephants are unique in the annals of animals humans rely on. Not truly domesticated, as are all of our other animal partners, these working elephants are mostly captured from the wild rather than deliberately bred. Shell, a professor of geography, became fascinated by places that don't show up on modern maps or GPS devices and eventually discovered the elephant trails that connect mountainous India and Burma. These paths are used by work elephants and their mahouts as they harvest teak, serve as ferries across monsoon-swollen rivers, and move people and supplies when mechanized transport fails. Shell spent time in remote villages with mahouts and their families, learning about the lives of working elephants, which are released into the forest at night, their front legs shackled so they can walk but not run. The elephants can forage for their own food, meet and possibly mate with wild elephants, and generally live their own lives until they are caught again for work. Shell presents a world in which the elephant is a valued partner and, while not truly free, is protected.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

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"No one who loves elephants or how humans interact with wildlife should pass up Jacob Shell's remarkable book." —Dan Flores, author of Coyote America

Giants of the Monsoon Forest journeys deep into the mountainous rainforests of Burma and India to explore the world of teak logging elephants and their intriguing alliance with humans. Jacob Shell's narrative vividly depicts elephants' extraordinary intelligence, and the complicated bond with individual human riders, a partnership that can last for decades. Giants of the Monsoon Forest reveals an unexpected relationship between evolution in the natural world and political struggles in the human one, while considering how Asia's secret forest culture might offer a way to help protect the fragile spaces both elephants and humans need to survive.

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Living and Working with Elephants

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W. W. Norton & Company

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   • description: Nature / Animals / Mammals
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