BiblioVault - Books about Elephant

Elephant

Soren Stockman

Four Way Books, 2022

"A serious young man, / I had trouble saying yes / to the bright, clear days," Soren Stockman's Elephant begins. The poems that follow move through despair, self-destruction, and disassociation to arrive, finally, at that elusive affirmation. Accompanied throughout by the imagined presence of Joseph Merrick, the 20th Century entertainer and medical patient popularly depicted as "The Elephant Man," Stockman's speaker interrogates how storytellers have co-opted Merrick's identity and obscured his voice and inner life. In this projected communion, Stockman tries to encounter the man who was rather than the role molded from his experiences. What does it mean to perform as another? What allows us to love ourselves, and what makes it hard? This debut collection is a path out of loneliness, beyond private absences, to the true self and what it harbors in its heart. Here, at the center of things, we succumb to the succor of existence, given to the light: "What a blessing to love the world / and then finally be born."

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Elephant

Dan Wylie

Reaktion Books, 2008

Aristotle characterized the elephant as “the beast which passeth all others in wit and mind” and the animal has long figured in cultural artifacts, even on continents it has never inhabited. Now Elephant provides an engaging look at the elephant’s long legacy.

The image of the elephant can be found throughout world cultures as a symbol of intelligence, strength, and loyalty. Wylie draws on a rich array of examples to document that symbolic power, ranging from symbols of the Hindu god of wisdom, Ganesh, to the beloved children’s works Dumbo and Babar the Elephant.

Turning to the elephant’s biological history, Wylie describes the three remaining species—the African Bush Elephant, African Forest Elephant, and the Asian Elephant—and the controversial efforts for elephant conservation. With ivory poaching and human encroachment into the animal’s natural habitats, Wylie argues that we face a uniquely poignant conservation crisis in which elephants and humans both unsustainably consume limited natural resources.

A compelling new entry in the Animal series, Elephant will be necessary for every animal lover’s bookshelf.

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The Elephant in the Universe

Our Hundred-Year Search for Dark Matter

Govert Schilling

Harvard University Press, 2022

A Seminary Co-op Notable Book
A BBC Sky at Night Best Book

“An impressively comprehensive bird’s-eye view of a research topic that is both many decades established and yet still at the very cutting edge of astronomy and physics.”
—Katie Mack, Wall Street Journal

“Schilling has craftily combined his lucid and accessible descriptions of science with the personal story of those unlocking the finer details of the missing mass mystery. The result is enthralling…A captivating scientific thriller.”
—BBC Sky at Night

“Fascinating…A thorough and sometimes troubling account of the hunt for dark matter…You will come away with a very good understanding of how the universe works. Well, our universe, anyway.”
—Michael Brooks, New Scientist

When you train a telescope on outer space, you can see luminous galaxies, nebulae, stars, and planets. But if you add all that together, it constitutes only 15 percent of the matter in the universe. Despite decades of research, the nature of the remaining 85 percent is unknown. We call it dark matter.

Physicists have devised huge, sensitive instruments to search for dark matter, which may be unlike anything else in the cosmos—some unknown elementary particle. Yet so far dark matter has escaped every experiment. It is so elusive that some scientists are beginning to suspect there might be something wrong with our theories about gravity or with the current paradigms of cosmology. Govert Schilling interviews believers and heretics and paints a colorful picture of the history and current status of dark matter research. The Elephant in the Universe is a vivid tale of scientists puzzling their way toward the true nature of the universe.

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Following the Elephant

Ethnomusicologists Contemplate Their Discipline

Edited by Bruno Nettl: A collection of articles from Ethnomusicology

University of Illinois Press, 2017

In Following the Elephant, Bruno Nettl edits articles drawn from fifty years of the pioneering journal Ethnomusicology. The roster of acclaimed scholars hail from across generations, using other works in the collection as launching points for dialogues on the history and accomplishments of the field. Nettl divides the collection into three sections. In the first, authors survey ethnomusicology from perspectives that include thoughts on defining and conceptualizing the field and its concepts. The second section offers milestones in the literature that critique major works. The authors look at what separates ethnomusicology from other forms of music research and discuss foundational issues. The final section presents scholars considering ethnomusicology--including recent trends--from the perspective of specific, but abiding, strands of thought. Contributors: Charlotte J. Frisbie, Mieczylaw Kolinski, Gerhard Kubik, George List, Alan P. Merriam, Bruno Nettl, David Pruett, Adelaida Reyes, Timothy Rice, Jesse D. Ruskin, Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Gabriel Solis, Jeff Todd Titon, J. Lawrence Witzleben, and Deborah Wong

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Seeing the Elephant

RAW RECRUITS AT THE BATTLE OF SHILOH

Joseph Allan Frank and George A. Reaves

University of Illinois Press, 1989

One of the bloodiest battles in the Civil War, the two-day engagement near Shiloh, Tennessee, in April 1862 left more than 23,000 casualties. Fighting alongside seasoned veterans were more than 160 newly recruited regiments and other soldiers who had yet to encounter serious action. In the phrase of the time, these men came to Shiloh to “see the elephant.”
Drawing on the letters, diaries, and other reminiscences of these raw recruits on both sides of the conflict, “Seeing the Elephant” gives a vivid and valuable primary account of the terrible struggle.
From the wide range of voices included in this volume emerges a nuanced picture of the psychology and motivations of the novice soldiers and the ways in which their attitudes toward the war were affected by their experiences at Shiloh.

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Utah Politics

The Elephant in the Room

Rod Decker

Signature Books, 2019

From the tempestuous fight for statehood to the evolution of Utah voters from Democrats to Republicans, Rod Decker analyzes the intersection of politics and faith in the complex political culture of modern Utah. Beginning with the state’s roots as a communal theocracy, Utah Politics deftly examines how Mormon morality influenced and continues to shape conflicts on both the local and federal levels. Whether determining the role nuclear fallout played in causing cancer epidemics throughout the state or the influence of Mormon lobbyists, Decker demonstrates how the rose that blossomed in the desert was sometimes fertilized by conspiracy, debate, and political machination.

Some themes reoccur: governors become popular by fighting federal oversight— signaling a lingering distrust that Washington could alter the Mormon way of life—and liberals use the court system to circumvent conservative legislatures who see public morality as a defining feature of government. Through this lens, issues both deceptively innocuous and deeply complex underscore Utah’s dance with religious freedom and civil liberty.

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