White Hunter: The Golden Age of African Safaris - Hardcover

Herne, Brian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805059199 ISBN 13: 9780805059199

Publisher: Henry Holt & Company Inc, 1999

Synopsis

East africa affects our imagination like few other places: The sight of a charging rhino goes directly to the heart; the limitless landscape of bony highlands, desert, and mountain is of "unequalled nobility", writes Dinessen. The adventures recorded here lasted only seventy years but include the legendary big-game safaris led by Selous and Bell; early hunters who by necessity were explorers; the Hill cousins, J. A. Hunter and Ionides; Cape-to-Cairo Grogan, who walked 4,000 miles for the love of a woman; Bror Von Blixen and the romantic Denys Finch. Their exploits inspired Hemingway's stories and movies with Clark Gable and Gregory Peck. Animal lovers, these hunters were the first conservationists, witnesses to the richest wildlife spectacle the earth has ever known.Brian Herne, formerly a professional hunter and one of the few awarded the Shaw and Hunter Trophy, evokes the harmony that existed between hunters and big game before poaching and politics intervened. White Hunters summons adventure, danger, and romance on a grand scale.

About this title

Review:

A little more than 100 years ago, East Africa was terra incognita to most whites: a land largely unmapped, sparsely settled by Europeans and teeming with wildlife, from elephants to wildebeest, bongos to rhinos, and all manner of frightening beasts in between. It was the hunter-adventurer's paradise, and by the early 20th century, a small, lionhearted clan of explorers and big game hunters began leading safaris there for money. They became the legendary "White Hunters" of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, men who led manifold adventurers--including royalty, film stars, writers, millionaires--in pursuit of the world's biggest, most dangerous and most sought-after game.

White Hunters is a nostalgic and densely-packed history of these men and their adventures, from the turn of the century until the 1970s when politics, a growing population, civil strife and concern about species destruction intervened. Herne has written a virtual and anecdotal Who's Who of White Hunters, crammed with the details of hundreds of hunts and the dozens of men who led them. This is no book for the fainthearted or the politically correct. Despite Herne's insistence that his heroes were the first true conservationists, White Hunters is all about the testosterone-enhanced glory of killing big, beautiful things: "Clary fired, dropping his quarry with a side brain shot. The record-class tusks weighed 159 and 143 pounds each, a gigantic elephant..." On the other hand, a staggering number of hunters died in pursuit of their quarry--mauled, eviscerated or impaled on the tusks of furious, vengeful beasts.

Not so long ago lions wandered the streets of Nairobi. The politics of big game hunting aside, the White Hunters' East Africa--wild, mysterious, unspoiled--is vanishing, and Herne has painstakingly documented an era that most readers will likely never know. --Svenja Soldovieri

Review:

"An authoritative and colorful study of African safaris that will appeal to armchair adventurers and history buffs alike." --"The Wall Street Journal"
." . . a rich portrait of a magnificent landscape, its animal inhabitants and some of its most reckless human interlopers." --"Publishers Weekly"
." . . provides invaluable documentation of a period that might otherwise have been consigned to oblivion, and does so with great style . . ." --"Raleigh News and Observer"

An authoritative and colorful study of African safaris that will appeal to armchair adventurers and history buffs alike. "The Wall Street Journal"

. . . a rich portrait of a magnificent landscape, its animal inhabitants and some of its most reckless human interlopers. "Publishers Weekly"

. . . provides invaluable documentation of a period that might otherwise have been consigned to oblivion, and does so with great style . . . "Raleigh News and Observer""

"An authoritative and colorful study of African safaris that will appeal to armchair adventurers and history buffs alike." --The Wall Street Journal

." . . a rich portrait of a magnificent landscape, its animal inhabitants and some of its most reckless human interlopers." --Publishers Weekly

." . . provides invaluable documentation of a period that might otherwise have been consigned to oblivion, and does so with great style . . ." --Raleigh News and Observer

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company Inc
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0805059199
• ISBN 13: 9780805059199
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 478