Amazon.com: Customer reviews: The Eye of the Elephant: An Epic Adventure in the African Wilderness

Top positive review

compelling, exciting, moving

Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2019

I found Delia Owens after reading her first novel, Where The Crawdads Sing, earlier this year. I LOVED it so I looked her up and found that she had written books prior about her adventures in Africa with her husband.
I adore elephants, they're amazing creatures. Naturally, this book title jumped out at me then.
The writing is excellent and really draws you in, the imagery is so vivid so that you can practically picture their environment.
I got this from the library and then ordered it from Amazon since I needed my own copy to reread and write in/give away.

78 people found this helpful

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Melody D. Scott

Tenacity is not an app

Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2019

I loved this book. But I love elephants. Story not too restorative since it's about how stupidity is killing off everything everywhere. What the people endured was absolutely awful. Missionaries and conservationalist must be masochists. Africa is totally screwed in its altruism and destructive greed.
Also the editor should be shot. I saw the same identical scene repeated three times. Plus many editing errors

17 people found this helpful

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Erin B.

compelling, exciting, moving

Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2019

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78 people found this helpful

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LaKuesti

An African love story

Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2018

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The fate of those magnificent animals pulls on one's heart strings and the devotion of the Owen's to their preservation is truly impressive. While this book deals mostly with the fight to protect the elephant, they are equally busy observing and researching the lives of other species: lions, hyenas, rhinos, various antelopes etc. And who would want to actually live in the Kalahari desert for years? Somehow they did and loved it. (read their previous book "The Cry of the Kalahari")
The authors are not intimidated by any local resistance and in the process manage to actually transform the lives of many villagers from being poachers to making an honest living. The ugly practice of wide-spread poaching is heart breaking and the Owens tell their story with equal passion. They also touch on their personal problems - Mark's almost fanatical pursuit of poachers at great personal risk - and Delia's stress under those circumstances.
Having had the pleasure of observing these animals in the wild I was easily swept up in their battle against and their writing about it.

44 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer Joanna Innes

Saving wildlife

Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2018

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I was intrigued by the difficulties endured by this devoted couple as they continued against so maný obstacles. Even their personal devòtion to each other was threatened but they wòuld not give up. Every time they fòund a lion pride again I felt their victory. When poachers werè stopped I feĺt their achievements. I was in the plane struggling to stay airborne or to ĺand on the inadequate airstrip. It was a very satisfying and eXciting book.

25 people found this helpful

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Barbara Hudson

A remarkable true story of how two people saved the wildlife in Africa from extinction.

Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2019

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This was a book read for the book club in which I am a member. Poaching wildlife, especially elephants for ivory and rhinos for their horns, had devastated populations in east Africa. Poachers sold the meat to local villagers and the ivory to exporters --Japanese and Europeans. The poaching of animals reminds me of the sculpture poachers in West Africa who have stripped tribal cultures there of the religious objects that gave these groups their unique identities and served as foci of their religious rituals and political organization. The African sculpture poachers were feeding a demand that originated in Europe and perfected in the United States, where wealthy collectors supported an industry of for-sale ethnic arts "galleries" like the former Harry Franklin Gallery in Beverly Hills .CA. An academic industry also arose, when university departments of Art History sent "experts" to Africa arts to to study and identify styles and geographic locations for the ethnic art pieces arriving for sale in the U.S. without provenance. Exhibitions of African art, in prestigious museums, served to increase the value of these ethnic sculptures, and even donations of such art objects to museums served the pockets of wealth collects as tax deductions. This form of poaching, unlike the poaching of animals for their skins, their meat and their ivory, has created an industry worth millions of dollars, especially for the western collectors who get in early. The indigenous traders bringing the objects to market made out ok, too, but the groups whose religious artifacts were taken, benefitting not at all from the export of their cultural identifies.

10 people found this helpful

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mike burke

African Wild Game Faces Annihilation

Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2019

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For readers fascinated by African elephants and other wildlife, this book is a primer in conservation challenges and practical solutions. It is also wonderfully written, painting Africa’s magic, fierce beauty with personal and emotional honesty. In the end this book will convince you to somehow help African elephants to survive and the local people vital to them prosper. Poaching can be defeated!

17 people found this helpful

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Claire A. Swinehart

Very educational!

Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2019

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I read the book because I am eon the protection of our ecolgy: animal, plants, water, etc.
It made me realized how hard scientists work toward that goal and how so very few peole seem to care.
I would have ordered more, but I had orders 2 books, was charged, and never got them on Kndle Fire.
I recommend this kind of reading who is also interested in our environment>

17 people found this helpful

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Sandra L. Murphy

Elephant Conservation Importance first-hand

Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2018

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There's something about elephants, and wildlife in Africa. Starting with"Born Free" when young; meeting and hearing Artist and Wildlife Conservationist David Shepherd, and now The Eye of the Elephant delves me into the struggle and bureaucracy of saving elephants from poaching in Africa. As the song says: "If I had a million dollars".

18 people found this helpful

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Christine K

Moving and gripping memoir

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2020

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Before Delia Owens became the bestselling novelist ("Where the Crawdads sing"), she spent over two decades in the African wilderness (Botswana and Zambia), where she and her then husband Mark Owens studied lions, hyenas and elephants; they both are biologists and animal behaviorists. The couple wrote these "diaries" together, but it is her parts that are clearly more personal (she talks about food and their often funny encounters with hyena cubs and feisty hornbills). Despite the "cute" parts, their life in these super remote areas in the Kalahari desert and in the Norther Luangwa National Park was hard and often very dangerous: Especially their struggles to save elephants and big cats from poachers led to scary, if not horrifying situations. You can read this book like a novel, it is written beautifully and full of fascinating observations and descriptions of parts of the world we never got to see (almost nobody did!). But make no mistake, this is not a travel guide: This book also describes the reckless hunting of an endangered species; it deals with dirty politics, poverty, corruption, and the desperation and anger of two animal activists who witness their beloved objects killed in front of their eyes. I would recommend to read it together with "Cry of the Kalahari", the beginning of Delia and Mark's life in Africa. And you will enjoy these "reports" even more when you know "Crawdads", because you recognize how similar animal and human behavior are, and you kind of enter Kya's mind.

One person found this helpful

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deepwater

For anyone who loves Wild Africa

Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2020

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This was what Wild Africa was like in another era: It reveals the glory of true wildness, many animals, no civilization. And it recounts in carefully worded descriptions the heartbreak of deep-seated corruption that nothing seems to penetrate--not all the well-meaning and even inspired attempts of this amazingly committed couple. I guess this read is more for nostalgia than anything else. But for those who truly didn't know how rich this continent was in sheer numbers, variety, visual richness of all the creatures we now see only in documentaries, it should be a revelation. Shame on us!

3 people found this helpful

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Bill A.

Excellent read!

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2021

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Excellent book, I highly suggest reading Cry of the Kalahari first, this is the second book and Savannah Sunset is the third, all 3 stand on their own but you will understand Mark and Delia's comments and why they have arrived here better. This just like the first book is very well written and a page turner, the first night I started it, I stayed up until midnight on a night when I am usually out by 9pm. It is a constant combo of stories which make laugh, touch your heart, make your hair stand on end or bring tears to your eyes. You can feel the heat, smell the rains, and picture the animals standing right in front of you.

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