Elephant's Life

The struggles and celebrations of nature's largest land creatures—with more than 250 spectacular full-color photos by Caitlin O'Connell and Timothy Rodwell

An Elephant's Life provides a unique and fascinating immersion into the world of the African elephant, told by a leading field biologist who has been researching and photographing these animals in their natural habitat for nearly two decades. Here, for the first time, readers get a fuller picture of elephant society cast in a broader context, including the life of the male elephant in all its high drama.

Merging the visual traditions of photojournalism and the nature documentary with the narrative voice of such classics as Jane Goodall's Chimpanzees of Gombe, this large-format, full-color volume of photo essays provides a uniquely rich understanding of what it's like to grow up and live within the complexities of elephant society at every turn of the page. Readers will experience the frustrations and anguish of the coming-of-age male struggling to leave his family, witness the constant vigilance a matriarch exerts to protect her family, and feel the drama of a dominant male trying to hold onto power during times of peace and times of social upheaval. Like Wolf Empire (Lyons Press, 2007), An Elephant's Life is an intimate portrait of a beloved and fascinating species.