This is as much a history of elephants performing in circuses as it is about this particular elephant so the title is a bit a misleading. Bradley's behind-the-scenes look at the life of circus and zoo elephants exposes the cruel world that all circus and zoo elephants endure in order to learn the unnatural tricks that entertain the public. Bradley is unflinching in her disturbing, sometimes horrific, descriptions of the history and evolution of the performing elephant world, where brutality by human trainers, inhumane living conditions and isolation force elephants into submission. Billie's fate is a rare happy one, as she is one of the circus elephants who ends up in the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. Bradley does a great job explaining the important work of this center devoted to rehabilitation and giving as comfortable and natural a life as possible to these rescued elephants. ( )

Escape from the circus

Billie, an Asian elephant captured as a baby and trained for the circus, serves as the focal point for Carol Bradley's history of animals in American circuses. Last Chain on Billie: How One Extraordinary Elephant Escaped the Big Top (St. Martin's Press, $25.99) follows Billie from capture to her eventual release to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee—hence the “last chain” of the title. It's a thorough examination of the mistreatment of animals captured, trained and exhibited for the entertainment of humans. Exhaustively footnoted, Bradley details cruel training practices and the ethical questions around using animals this way. While Billie is the exemplar of these practices, the book's mission is to inform and outrage, and it is extremely effective at that.

Reviewed for the Sacramento News & Review: http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/escape-from-the-circus/content?oid=14279239 ( )