The Emperor and the Elephants is a deeply moving memoir chronicling one Peace Corps volunteer's fascinating experiences in the Central African Republic during the late 1970s.
After hiking the Appalachian Trail in 1975, author Richard W. Carroll joined the Peace Corps, signing on as a fisheries extension agent in the heart of Africa. Balancing the rose-tinted writings of an optimistic twenty-three-year-old volunteer with pragmatic reflections from over forty years later, most of which he spent in Africa as a wildlife conservationist for the World Wildlife Fund, Carroll draws readers into a wildly unique place and time.
In 1977, under the brutal rule of Jean-Bidel Bokassa, the self-proclaimed president for life, the Central African Republic became the Central African Empire, and it's against this political backdrop that Carroll served-first in small villages, discovering the rich cultures of a warm and welcoming people, then as a wildlife biologist in Manovo-Gounda St. Floris National Park, in the remote north.
The Emperor and the Elephants abounds with vivid, often poetic descriptions of the wildlife, close encounters, peaceful revelations, and thoughtful reflections on a location that's as far from mountains and ocean as one can get on planet Earth.
About the Author: Dr. Richard W. Carroll is an award-winning conservationist who served for thirty-five years with the World Wildlife Fund, culminating his career as the vice president of the WWF Africa and Madagascar programs, spending twenty years living in central Africa studying rhinos, elephants, and gorillas.
He holds a bachelor's degree in marine biology along with a PhD in forestry from Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
An accomplished naturalist, he walked the two-thousand-mile Appalachian Trail in 1975, one year after completing his undergraduate degree. He then spent five years in the Central African Republic as a Peace Corps volunteer, serving as a fisheries extension agent in small villages and then as a wildlife biologist in isolated parks in the north of the country.
He chronicles these remarkable experiences in his memoirs 2,000 Miles Around the Tree of Life and The Emperor and the Elephants.
Recently retired, he's married with three children and two grandchildren.
