This incredible autobiography of Christiane F. provides a vivid portrait of teen friendship, drug abuse, and alienation in and around Berlin's notorious Zoo Station. Christiane's rapid descent into heroin abuse and prostitution is shocking, but the boredom, longing for acceptance, thrilling risks, and even her musical obsessions are familiar to everyone. Previously published in Germany and the US to critical acclaim, Zest's new translation includes original photographs of Christiane and her friends.
Wild animals have been housed in zoos and aquariums for 5,000 years, fascinating people living in virtually every society. Today, these institutions are at a new milestone in their history. This second edition of Zoo and Aquarium History takes the reader on a journey through the transition of private collections to menageries, to zoos, then zoological gardens, and more recently conservation centers and sanctuaries. Under the direction of Vernon N. Kisling, an expert in zoo history, an international team of authors has thoroughly updated the only comprehensive, global history of animal collections, menageries, zoos, and aquariums. The resulting book documents the continuum of efforts in maintaining wild animal collections from ancient civilizations through today, explaining how modern zoos have developed their mission statements around the core aims of conservation, education, research and recreation. This new edition pulls together regional information, including new chapters on zoological gardens of Canada, Latin America, China, Israel, the Middle East, and New Zealand, along with the cultural aspects of each region to provide a foundation upon which further research can be based. It presents a chronological listing of the world's zoos and aquariums and features many never-before published photographs. Sidebars present supplementary information on pertinent personalities, events, and wildlife conservation issues. The original Appendix has been expanded to include over 1,200 zoos and aquariums, providing an invaluable resource. This is an extensive, chronological introduction to the subject, highlighting the published and archival resources for those who want to know more.
Wild animals have fascinated human observers since time immemorial. The story of our interest in collecting, classifying and dominating Nature so that its inner workings could be understood also looms large in the history of science, and thus it is surprising that the history of menageries, zoological gardens and the zoo as we know it today has been so poorly documented. This gap is addressed by Zoo, a comprehensive history of the zoo in the Western world.
As one of the world's most popular cultural activities, wild animal collections have been attracting visitors for 5,000 years. Under the direction of Vernon N. Kisling, an expert in zoo history, an international team of authors has compiled the first comprehensive, global history of animal collections, menageries, zoos, and aquariums. Zoo and Aquar
May 1945. The war in Europe has come to an end. Bombardments by the Allies and house-to-house combat between the German Wehrmacht and the Russian Red Army have turned the city into a pile of rubble. The impressive 19th century zoo next to Tiergarten Park has also suffered heavily from the violence of war. Many stray bombs came down on the premises. During the battle of Berlin, the zoo turned into a battlefield as tanks and shells left their destructive traces. The premises of the zoo, once so well-attended, has deteriorated to a gruesome cratered landscape. Dead soldiers and carcasses of animals lie scattered everywhere. Less than 100 of the approximately 3,500 animals have survived. "War Zone Zoo" tells the gripping tale of the Berlin Zoo, its employees and its animals in wartime. Its history and restoration also pass review. This is a story of how violence and dictatorship made the Berlin Zoo lose its innocence, but it is also a story about love for animals, human powers of survival and the rebirth of the historic and public icon the Berlin Zoo still is today.
The unbelievable true story of the Cold War’s strangest proxy war, fought between the zoos on either side of the Berlin Wall. “The liveliness of Mohnhaupt’s storytelling and the wonderful eccentricity of his subject matter make this book well worth a read.” —Star Tribune (Minneapolis) Living in West Berlin in the 1960s often felt like living in a zoo, everyone packed together behind a wall, with the world always watching. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, East Berlin and its zoo were spacious and lush, socialist utopias where everything was perfectly planned... and then rarely completed. Berlin’s two zoos in East and West quickly became symbols of the divided city’s two halves. So no one was terribly surprised when the head zookeepers on either side started an animal arms race—rather than stockpiling nuclear warheads, they competed to have the most pandas and hippos. Soon, state funds were being diverted toward giving these new animals lavish welcomes worthy of visiting dignitaries. West German presidential candidates were talking about zoo policy on the campaign trail. And eventually politicians on both side of the Wall became convinced that if their zoo proved to be inferior, that would mean their country’s whole ideology was too. A quirky piece of Cold War history unlike anything you’ve heard before, The Zookeepers’ War is an epic tale of desperate rivalries, human follies, and an animal-mad city in which zookeeping became a way of continuing politics by other means.
