Author: David Chandler
Publisher: SAFARI PRESS, Mar 2009
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 1-57157-285-6
Synopsis
Illustrated w/ period photos & drawings this book; has frozen in time a history of Africa & its most illustrious characters like no other before it. Photos & illus; 8.5x11 inches, 375 pgs.
More Information
Avid readers of Africana are well aware that Africa has attracted more than its share of adventurers, explorers, big-game hunters, and ivory poachers. David Chandler has spent the last 12 years completing a book of biographical sketches on all of Africa?s early explorers and hunters, both obscure and well known. Whether they be the worst scoundrels, thieves, and deceitful characters, or those who legitimately came to make the continent better by trying to abolish the slave trade, 1,200 in all are listed?starting with Abbott, Doctor William Louis (1860?1936) and ending with Zwilling, Ernst (1904?1990). Read about the Pygmy Ota Benga, an intelligent man who was caught and traded like an animal, stuck on a ship, and placed in a cage in the New York Zoo. Learn why Henry Stanley is Donald Trump?s alter ego. Read about those who attempted to cross the continent with all sorts of strange modes of transportation and those who sought gold or diamonds. Find out who were the ivory hunters, instigators of wars,creators of countries, and plain-out fortune seekers. The author says in his introduction ?I?ve focused to a large extent on those who made their living ?off their guns?; the ivory hunters, the hide hunters, and the many others who made their livelihood with a rifle.? This alone turned out to be an enormous amount of work. Each person entry has a biographical sketch as well as the subject?s hunting and other accomplishments. The inevitable controversies and contradictions in the historical record are dealt with fully, with all of the different versions and views explored. The book will also prove of interest to bibliophiles and book collectors, as a great deal of attention has been paid to the memoirs and histories of those hunters who left a written record of their lives. Every effort has been made as well to track down the military service records of men like Commander David Blunt (elephant control officer in Tanganyika) and Colonel John H. Patterson (of Tsavo lion fame). Illustrated with period photos and drawings this book has frozen in time a history of Africa and its most illustrious characters like no other before it.