Seeing as I am an animal lover I read a lot of non-fiction books about wild animals. I know that these books will be exciting or interesting, so I suppose it would be a stretch to say that any of them really surprised me in this regard. Typically, I'm more often than not surprised when an interesting sounding non-fiction book turns out to be a dud. I can tell you what one of my favorites is, though, it's a book by a South African conservationist called Lawrence Anthony titled The Elephant Whisperer. It came out in 2009 I believe, only a few years before the untimely death of the author. His book is about a herd of wild African elephants that was supposed to be shot because they were seen as a danger, but then Anthony intervened to save them. He has his hands full with the animals when he tries to keep them on his conservationist game sanctuary as they are very adept at escaping. What touched my heart is that Anthony knew the elephants would be put down if he didn't care for them, so he never gave up on them. It is a brilliant book that describes perfectly how much hard work goes into conservation, but also the amount of passion and dedication some people has for it.