ANIMAL lovers, beware! Not only does the giraffe owned by the Italian statesman Lorenzo de Medici come to a sad end, but few of the powerful characters in this book seem to care much about the exotic animals they collect. Belozerskaya tells the stories of seven such individuals – ranging from Ptolemy II Philadelphos, a Hellenistic ruler of Egypt, to newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. The Medici Giraffe is a pleasant collection of entertaining historical vignettes, but you will not learn much about elephants, cassowaries or pandas.
The Medici Giraffe
Little, Brown
