Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
A second-generation Kenyan who has professionally hunted big game for more than 30 years and is an honorary Uganda National Park warden, Herne did exhaustive archival research and conducted countless interviews to produce this encyclopedia of gore and glamour. From roughly 1890 to 1970, American and European aristocrats, movie stars and business tycoons converged on East Africa, hiring professional white hunters to lead them on lengthy, luxurious shooting expeditions. Theodore Roosevelt's 1909 safari lasted for months and employed 500 porters. The early generation of white hunters set the pace for a hard-drinking, bed-hopping lifestyle. Later, Bror Blixen, Isak Dinesen and Denys Finch-Hatton carried on just as flamboyantly as their screen counterparts in Out of Africa. In turn-of-the-century Nairobi, inebriated ladies rode their ponies up steps into bars. But the dangers were real, and Herne details various narrow escapes and deaths by mauling. Typically colorful is the story about the filming of King Solomon's Mines, during which a bull elephant rushed the cameras and was stopped by a bullet. The relieved crew and actors posed for pictures on the animal, which disappeared later that day, never to be found again. Heavier on anecdotes than on overview, Herne's book skips discreetly over all the cultural and political ironies of Europeans coming to Africa to shoot at its natural resources. It will, however, reward armchair hunters with a rich portrait of a magnificent landscape, its animal inhabitants and some of its most reckless human interlopers. (June) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Herne, a second-generation Kenyan who spent three decades as a big game hunter, offers an anecdotal history of East African safaris from the late 19th century to the government hunting bans of the 1970s (bans that, ironically, opened the door for the wanton slaughter of animals by poachers). His story revolves around short biographical sketches of famous white hunters (professional hunters) down through this era, with interwoven information about major events including World War I campaigns in East Africa, the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s, and the emergence in the 1970s of African strongmen such as Idi Amin. Accounts of enraged beasts attacking and mauling hunters or being stopped by last-second shots tend to have a certain sameness, but Herne succeeds in capturing his audience through his portrayal of men who lived on the edge, enjoying sexual liaisons with beautiful women drawn to the lure of Africa even as death lurked around every corner. Recommended for larger public libraries.Jim G. Burns, Ottumwa P.L., IA
Kirkus Reviews
A starry-eyed who's who of white hunters in Africa from the turn of the century to the present day, from professional big-game hunter Herne. It didn't take a rocket scientist among the European explorers trooping about the Land of Punt (as north Somaliland was known in mid-19th century) to figure it was choice hunting terrain: You couldn't throw a brick without hitting a giant eland, a bongo, a kudu, or a red lechwe. By the end of that century, professionals who guided hunting parties—i.e., the white hunters—were thick enough on the ground to have become an institution. They might have been a multitalented lot, as Herne writes, but foremost they were men's men, fearless to a fault, and not infrequently terminated with extreme prejudice by their quarry. Herne specializes in these episodes. A great pachyderm finished off noted hunter Bill Judd ("The elephant smashed the pulped body to the ground again, and this time the elephant kneeled on Judd"), while the aristocratic, easygoing Fritz Schindelar got close to an intolerant nobleman of the jungle ("The lion knocked Fritz down and in seconds straddled him, tearing out his stomach with its teeth"). Gory incidents feature in many of the dozens of short biographical sketches, which include Bror Blixen and Denys Finch Hatton, of Isak Dinesen notoriety, among the men who accompanied presidents and emperors, assorted billionaires and movie stars. There is a measure of death and testosterone in these pages that can be disturbing, and Herne's wine can easily be a reader's poison: "The lion was beautifully silhouetted against the moonlit sky, and Foran killed it." And Herne's defense of the white hunters, accused of being part ofthe elephant-decimation problem, feels hollow: dedicated conservationists don't have their photos taken with their foot on the head of a rhino they've just killed. Yet those who cherish stories of legendary nimrods at work in lands of mystery, romance, and danger will find this a deep trough from which to drink their fill. (50 b&w photos)
From the Publisher
"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
