Largest of all beasts that dwell on land, elephants can uproot trees or topple the huts of a village. They have the power to communicate in a language of subsonic frequencies, snorkel across the open sea between islands, care for their wounded and mourn their dead. Asian elephants were domesticated more than 4,000 years ago and, like their African cousins (whose numbers have been halved each decade since the 1970s), they face extinction through an over-whelming loss of habitat. In this book, Douglas Chadwick provides a comprehensive exploration of the natural history and modern fate of the world"s elephants, centred around the theme that "we are discovering a creature greater in many ways - and more like us - than we had ever imagined it to be even as we are destroying it." The book blends field biology with personal observation. It looks behind the headlines, he covers the "ivory wars" in East Africa and elsewhere.