NOTICE: Due to current guidance from public health officials, the Library is canceling all programs, events, meeting room bookings, and outreach activities during the month of March. At this time, all branch locations continue to operate with normal hours. Find out more about our response to COVID-19 and how to access library services online at wcls.org.

John Hoyte recounts his uncommon life adventures. With each surprising twist and turn of his journey, he builds a life infused with purpose and creativity.

Find the book in the library: Persistence of Light

Book Description:John Hoyte was a student at Cambridge University who realized one day that a grant he might get could provide an interesting and unusual summer vacation. And thus was born the idea of leading an elephant over the Alps via the trails, paths, and mountain passes taken by Hannibal with his army and war elephants in 218 B.C to do battle with the Roman empire. Hoyte’s successful mission, with an elephant named Jumbo on loan from the Turin zoo, became a media sensation, leading to international coverage and starting him on the way to a fifty-year career as an inventor and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. Hoyte’s story is a fascinating one, beginning with the six years of his childhood spent in a Japanese internment camp in China during World War II. Throughout the years that followed, he has taken each surprising twist and turn of fate and used it to help build a life infused with purpose, creativity and fulfillment.