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Zoo Story

Life in the Garden of Captives

Contributors

By Thomas French

Formats and Prices

Price

$21.99

Price

$28.99 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. Trade Paperback $21.99 $28.99 CAD
  2. ebook $8.99 $11.99 CAD
  3. Hardcover $24.99 $26.99 CAD

“This story, told by a master teller of such things, does more than take you inside the cages, fences, and walls of a zoo. It takes you inside the human heart, and an elephant’s, and a primate’s, and on and on. Tom French did in this book what he always does. He took real life and wrote it down for us, with eloquence and feeling and aching detail.”
-Rick Bragg, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author

“An insightful and detailed look at the complex life of a zoo and its denizens, both animal and human.”
-Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi and Beatrice and Virgil

Welcome to the savage and surprising world of Zoo Story, an unprecedented account of the secret life of a zoo and its inhabitants. Based on six years of research, the book follows a handful of unforgettable characters at Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo: an alpha chimp with a weakness for blondes, a ferocious tiger who revels in Obsession perfume, and a brilliant but tyrannical CEO known as El Diablo Blanco.

The sweeping narrative takes the reader from the African savannah to the forests of Panama and deep into the inner workings of a place some describe as a sanctuary and others condemn as a prison. Zoo Story shows us how these remarkable individuals live, how some die, and what their experiences reveal about the human desire to both exalt and control nature.

On Sale
May 17, 2011
Page Count
304 pages
Publisher
Hachette Books
ISBN-13
9781401310530

Thomas French

About the Author

Kelley Benham French is a Professor of Practice in journalism at Indiana University. A former reporter and editor for the Tampa Bay Times, she was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for “Never Let Go,” a series about Juniper’s survival.

Thomas French is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and the Riley Endowed Chair in Journalism at Indiana University. He is the author of Unanswered Cries, South of Heaven, and the New York Times bestseller Zoo Story.

Learn more about this author