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This digital document is an article from Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2005. The length of the article is 5326 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The EC Zoos Directive: a lost opportunity to implement the convention on biological diversity.
Author: Paul A. Rees
Publication: Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 8Issue: 1Page: 51(12)

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Zoo is the second collection of poems by the successful young British writer, Tobias Hill, to be published by Oxford University Press. Hill's nocturnal, ferret-like eye and emotional stance somewhere between distance and intimacy lend the poems in his new collection a narrative, almost conversational feel.He follows the tracks of rivers and canals, listening to the sounds of the animals in their cages at the London Zoo. Along the way, he treats the reader to the impressions he picks up as if they were bits of interesting rubbish that signify something important. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Best book ever written on 80s alt-Berlin
i lived in west berlin 1983-1984 and find walker's books one of the best ever written on 80s berlin--at least the 80s berlin i knew, schöneberg, kreuzberg, the music scene, the squats. a must-read for any current berliner who has any interest in music, arts, history and politics.

as for the "execable" review below, it is journalism -- no pretenses to fine art. comparisons to beat writers are absurd. i don't know what part or social sector of berlin that reviewer lived in, but he clearly missed the best stuff as seen in the book "zoo station."

walker never wrote the book on Nicaragua as he sadly died in the early 90s.

Ian Walker
August 13, 1952 - December 8, 1990
RIP!

Song of the Shirt
"Zoo Station" is important as a document of the young Left in the West in the 1980s, during a time when the United States was funding vicious wars in Central America and the Soviet Union was preparing tocollapse.Since the Berlin Wall has fallen , few people have had much goodto say about the governments of the former Eastern Bloc countries, and themedia treats the continued existance of a strong communist movement inEastern Germany as an anachronism.Having read "Zoo Station", Iwas able to understand why some people regarded East Germany as a pinnacleof socialist achievement, much more preferable to its capitalist twin inthe West.It is good travel writing, and is both politically andculturally astute.

Walker's life among the Turkish residents of Kreuzbergin Berlin also has helped me understand the predicament of guestworkers inGermany, the country with the highest percentage of resident"foreigners" in Europe.

More than anything, "ZooStation" highlights Walker's skill as a journalist, and it's a shamehe never did publish that book on Nicaragua like he said he would.

One of the Top Ten Worst Books Ever
I first visited Berlin over a quarter of a century ago when, like the author, I was a young man in my 20s. I have lived and studied there. I have crashed out in the tower blocks of the satellite suburbs and walked thesleazy inner-city streets at night. I think I know the place pretty well;Berliner friends tell me I probably know it better than some of the locals!The buzz about the place is alluring and irresistible. Berlin is a city Ilove dearly. I also think I've read most of whatever is worth reading aboutthe place, in both English and German.

Why do I mention all of this?Simply to underline the sheer awfulness of this execrable piece ofwork.

Heavily influenced by 'On the Road', Walker Dean Moriarties his waythrough a Berlin populated by spongers, drop-outs and weirdos whose livesrevolve around dope, booze and 70s soul. Trouble is, he ain't no Kerouac.Of course, part of the city's attraction - as it has been down through theages - lies in its vibrant social mix. In many ways, the people ARE thecity. But really, to read Walker, you'd think they spent half their liveslying in the gutter, stoned and wondering where the next handout was comingfrom.

Walker's book does a disservice to a great and wonderful city.There is no sense of balance or perspective about his work, the'adventures' of the title become predictable and repetitive and the stylesuffers from a painful desire to show us all how ultra-hip he is.

Thisis one of those books that you keep reading simply because it's so bad.Like a rabbit transfixed byoncoming headlights, you can't tear yourselfaway. I wish I could have given it no stars.

description of sybaritic person's view of divided Berlin
Just read while visitng Berlin in 1997.Good historical background of divided city.I enjoyed his perspective of questioning both societies' institutions (he was in his 20's & lived with many other young people who partied & lived a hedonistic poor life in West Berlin.)Excellent background for a 1st time visitor to Berlin.I'd like to find more of author's writing but unable to. ... Read more

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Detailing one of London's most popular attractions, this is a collection of all the themed London Zoo posters featured on the Underground system. The author is an Assistant Curator at the London Transport Museum and follows the informative layout of "By Underground to Kew". ... Read more

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To modern sensibilities, nineteenth-century zoos often seem to be unnatural places where animals led miserable lives in cramped, wrought-iron cages. Today zoo animals, in at least the better zoos, wander in open spaces that resemble natural habitats and are enclosed, not by bars, but by moats, cliffs, and other landscape features. In Savages and Beasts, Nigel Rothfels traces the origins of the modern zoo to the efforts of the German animal entrepreneur Carl Hagenbeck.

By the late nineteenth century, Hagenbeck had emerged as the world's undisputed leader in the capture and transport of exotic animals. His business included procuring and exhibiting indigenous peoples in highly profitable spectacles throughout Europe and training exotic animals -- humanely, Hagenbeck advertised -- for circuses around the world. When in 1907 the Hagenbeck Animal Park opened in a village near Hamburg, Germany, Hagenbeck brought together all his business interests in a revolutionary zoological park. He moved wild animals out of their cages and into "natural landscapes" alongside "primitive" peoples from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the islands of the Pacific. Hagenbeck had invented a new way of imagining captivity: the animals and people on exhibit appeared to be living in the wilds of their native lands.

By looking at Hagenbeck's multiple enterprises, Savages and Beasts demonstrates how seemingly enlightened ideas about the role of zoos and the nature of animal captivity developed within the essentially tawdry business of placing exotic creatures on public display. Rothfels provides both fascinating reading and much-needed historical perspective on the nature of our relationship with the animal kingdom.

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When a storm drives Pyne the polecat and his mate, Cass, to flee their native mountains in Wales, they become nomads in a terrifying world of urban development. They finally settle in woods and fields frequented by unfamiliar creatures, including human beings who threaten their fragile freedom. ... Read more

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In 1826 the arrival of the first giraffe ever to come to France causes a sensation throughout the country, especially during the giraffe's fifty-two day walk from Marseilles to Paris. ... Read more

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The name of Carl Hagenbeck is as evocative in Europe as that of P. T. Barnum or Walt Disney in North America. Hagenbeck was the nineteenth century's foremost animal trader and ethnographic showman, known for his enormously popular displays of people, animals, and artifacts gathered from all corners of the globe. The culmination of Hagenbeck's commercial ventures was the opening of his Tierpark near Hamburg in 1907, a dazzling assemblage of constructed exotic environments inhabited by humans and animals.

Eric Ames shows that Hagenbeck's various enterprises illustrate a significant evolution in popular culture. Earlier display forms that relied on the collection and presentation of "authentic" artifacts and living beings -the panorama, the zoological garden, the ethnographic collection - gave rise to the self-consciously synthetic forms of entertainment that we now associate with theme parks and films. This shift took place in the context of Hagenbeck's exhibitions, which were simultaneously the apotheosis of the collecting impulse and the germinating source for the creation of fictional spaces that rely for their effect on the spectator's imaginative engagement and interaction with the spectacle.

Carl Hagenbeck's Empire of Entertainments locates Hagenbeck's myriad enterprises in the context of colonialism and nascent globalization; ethnography and anthropology; zoological gardens and international expositions; museum culture and visual spectacle; and consumerism and immersive entertainments. By tracing out the divergent lineages of themed environments, Ames offers a vivid reconstruction of the impulses and contradictions that lay behind the visual and display culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - a culture that forms the foundation of contemporary themed environments.

Written in an accessible style with many wonderful images, this book draws on meticulous archival research and a wealth of primary sources not available in English. It is an original and entertaining interdisciplinary study that will appeal to readers interested in visual culture, popular culture, nineteenth-century German history, and film studies, as well as anyone intrigued by the history of such popular entertainments as zoos, museums, panoramas, world's fairs, cinema, theme parks, anthropological exhibitions, and Wild West Shows. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Challenging the idea of theme space as an essentially American phenomenon
"Carl Hagenbeck's Empire of Entertainments" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Ames's book interview ran here as cover feature on May 4, 2009.

A work of impressive and seminal scholarship
Carl Hagenbeck was to 19th Century European popular entertainment what Walt Disney and P.T. Barnum were to America in later years. Hagenbeck was a well-known animal trader and ethnographic showman who, like Barnum, charged admission to a fascinated public of his collections of people, animals and artifacts drawn from all over the world. His collections culminated in his 1907 opening of Tierpark (near Hamburge, Germany) featuring the creation of exotic environments inhabited by both humans and animals. In "Carl Hagenbeck's Empire Of Entertainments", Eric Ames (Assistant Professor of German, University of Washington) has written and compiled a seminal biographical work that provides a historical perspective and framework for Hagenbeck's myriad enterprises in the context of European colonialism and an emerging globalization; what we would today describe as ethnography and anthropology; the popularity of zoological gardens and international expositions; the paradoxes of museum culture and visual spectacle; the phenomena of consumerism and immersive entertainments with respect to such public entertainments that ranged from Wild West Shows to theme parks to world fairs. Occasionally illustrated with black-and-white period photographs, "Carl Hagenbeck's Empire Of Entertainments" is a work of impressive and seminal scholarship making it strongly recommended for academic library 19th & 20th Century Popular Culture Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists.
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A true story—as powerful as Schindler’s List—in which the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands.

When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw—and the city’s zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen “guests” hid inside the Zabinskis’ villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the Polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the elephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonina kept her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants—otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes.

With her exuberant prose and exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Diane Ackerman engages us viscerally in the lives of the zoo animals, their keepers, and their hidden visitors. She shows us how Antonina refused to give in to the penetrating fear of discovery, keeping alive an atmosphere of play and innocence even as Europe crumbled around her.

Customer Reviews (184)

The Zookeeper's Wife
I have read several books about the Holocaust.99% of them were riveting and heart-rending as well as informative. I could not finish this book. I felt like I was wading through the quick-sand of overdone prose.Perhaps Ms. Ackerman should have written a book of poetry. This was a potentially great story that ended up going all over the place.There was no sense of a beginning, a middle and an end.It was like listening to someone rambling in all kinds of directions.Anyway, there are many books to which I would be happy to give 5 stars -- unfortunately this is not one of them.

I Write with Guilt Because I Didn't Love It
This, as every other book reminding us of awesome people who risk everything for others, is an important book, and I am glad I read it.Jan's matter-of-fact entrance into saving people shows a humanity that is unquestioning and pure.He is awe-inspiring. His wife follows without questioning, and it is through her experience that we see fears that we can relate to, and her story is somehow easier for most of us, unfortunately, to understand.

But I did not enjoy the book because of the exquisite details of unrelated or tangential people or events.I came away knowing more about Badger's personality than Rys'.I did not need to know, for several pages, about the butterfly collection, or the details of animal poop.

I'm glad I read it, however, and sometimes an important book is not necessarily a "good read."

Did we need to know that?
I really wanted to like this book. I really am quite fascinated with WW11 stories of heroism and bravery in the face of death and war. I was mislead by the many rave reviews of this book and while the story of this family must be told, do we need to know... that the word vitamins was coined by a polish biochemist or how a hippo flings its tail like a propeller when it defecates? The author goes of on tirades about people that do not need to be mentioned and story lines about things that could take a mere two sentences to explain, rather than 17 pages to explain who is at the door, ie pgs 114-131. The book in agonizing to read.
This book is filled with useless story lines that do not explain the true story that people are looking for in this book. The behind the scenes of what it was like every day back then to be a polish zookeeper's wife defying the odds.

Not a boring, nor a gruesome true tale
What an excellent story. For me, a very different perspective on the war and the abuse of the Jewish people.

A great story, horrible writing!!!
I really wanted to love this book. It was a cross between a novel and a nonfiction book. The author should have picked one of those and stuck with it. This story is so incredible, so wonderful, but written by this author, it's all wrong! A good book to take out of the library! I wish I had! ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Internet Bookwatch, published by Midwest Book Review on April 1, 2010. The length of the article is 758 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Travel Shelf.(Book review)
Author: Unavailable
Publication: Internet Bookwatch (Newsletter)
Date: April 1, 2010
Publisher: Midwest Book Review
Page: NA

Article Type: Book review

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