Elephant (de Camp book)

Elephant is a 1964 science book by L. Sprague de Camp, published by Pyramid Books as part of The Worlds of Science series.[1]

Elephant

Cover of Elephant
Author	L. Sprague de Camp
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Zoology
Publisher	Pyramid Books
Publication date	1964
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	179 pp

The book treats its subject comprehensively, covering elephants in captivity and the wild, their use in ancient warfare, modern conflicts between elephants and farmers, and preservation efforts, among other topics. It is "[d]esigned for the general reader and student, about the various aspects of the world's largest land animal, from fossils to captive elephants."[2]

While a decent study, the book is important more for its insight into the mind of the author than in its own right, elephants being a lifelong interest of de Camp's that figures in many of his other literary works. In his early time travel novel Lest Darkness Fall his protagonist Martin Padway pens a similar monograph, while in his historical novel An Elephant for Aristotle details the difficulties in transporting an elephant from India to Greece during ancient times. De Camp also wrote a number of articles about elephants, a few of which appeared, together with a chapter selected from the present work, in his later collection The Fringe of the Unknown (1983).