"[4] It is illustrated with pen-and-ink sketches, maps and charts, and includes eight pages of unnumbered black-and-white photographs, a bibliography and index.

"[4] The Science Teacher praises the book's "academic and sometimes lighthearted text," noting "[t]he author has a knack for interjecting subtleties such as 'nobody has yet fitted an elephant with false teeth.'"

It rates the book "an excellent junior high school library reference, especially for students who need a readable source for a class report.

"[3] While a decent study, the book is important more for its insight into the mind of the author than in its own right, elephants being a lifelong interest of de Camp's that figures in many of his other literary works.

De Camp also wrote a number of articles about elephants, a few of which appeared, together with a chapter selected from the present work, in his later collection The Fringe of the Unknown (1983).