Product Description

St. Martin's is proud to present a new and continuing series of the greatest classics in the literature of hunting and adventure, chosen from the personal library of writer and big game hunter Peter Hathaway Capstick. These showcase volumes will once again make available the true masterpieces of Africana to collectors, armchair hunters, sportsmen, and readers at large.

The twenty-sixth president of the United States was also a world-renowned hunter, conservationist, soldier, and scholar. In 1908 he took a long safari holiday in East Africa with his son Kermit. His account of this adventure is as remarkably fresh today as it was when these adventures on the veldt were first published. Roosevelt describes the excitement of the chase, the people he met (including such famous hunters as Cunninghame and Selous), and flora and fauna he collected in the name of science. Long out of print, this classic is one of the preeminent examples of Africana, and belongs on every collector's shelf.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #73265 in Books
• Published on: 1988-07-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 624 pages

About the Author
Peter Hathaway Capstick, former Wall Street stockbroker turned professional adventurer, has been critically acclaimed as the successor to Hemingway and Ruark in African hunting literature. After hunting in Central and South America, Capstick went to Africa in 1968, where the New Jersey-born writer continues to live. He has held professional hunting licenses in four countries, and served as a game officer. He has written seven exciting books on Africa, including Death in the Long Grass, Peter Capstick's Africa, and The Last Ivory Hunter: The Saga of Wally Johnson. He's also featured in an award-winning safari video and audio tapes.

Customer Reviews

An Accurate Portrail of Life on Safari
Theodore Roosevelt has captured life on the safari brilliantly in this wonderfully written book. Having been to Kenya three times myself, I was able to relive my own experiences on the Dark Continent through T.R.'s words. He "shot" Africa with the use of his Springfield and Winchester, and I through my Minolta. But the excitement and adrenaline rush of viewing the magnificent beasts of the wild may be captured in similar ways. T.R.'s vivid descriptions of his adventures makes this depiction of Africa come to life. Through his use of graphic details of kills, life on safari, and portrayals of the people themselves makes this book worth reading. At times, I found it nearly impossible to put down. T.R. outdid himself with this one, and those who have never been to Africa, may be tempted upon the completion of this novel. I applaud this effort and recommend "African Game Trails" to anyone...

African Game Trails
A great book, detail the Roosevelt Expedition for the SMithsonian Institute. Teddy and his son Kermit travel almost the length of Afirca in a grand year long safari. They encounter all of the Big 5 adn the lesser aniamls as well. Teddy's observations of native customs and people are quite revealing for a New York raised politician! The Roosevelts hunted with some of the premier big game hunter of the era, Selous, Percival, the Hill brothers etc. This book is not to be missed,it is an important book on Afica but more so on Roosevelt. I recommend it highly.

Like a long conversation with Teddy
This is no literary masterpiece, it has no great theme or thesis; rather it is like what you might have heard if you had the opportunity to converse at length with Roosevelt, but that makes this a very good book. You hear his African stories, his opinions, his knowledge of animals and hunting. The book proceeds chronologically and contains many excellent descriptions of tracking and hunting African game (these might become redundant for some readers). Readers might also be disturbed by his description of what he perceived as the inferiority of certain African peoples, and the need for Africans to be "civilized" through European rule. He also believed in the rightness of making parts of Africa (the best parts of course) a "white man's country" for European settlers, though he insists that "the African native should be treated fairly"--how this would be accomplished is not discussed. Still...

"African Game Trails" is a wonderful book for anyone interested in East Africa in the early 1900's, or for anyone interested in Theodore Roosevelt. It was his love of the outdoors, of nature, and of hunting (not contridictions in his time) that led Roosevelt to spend a significant amount of his life in the world's wide open spaces away from "civilization". It is clear that he, like many great thinkers (Beethoven comes to mind), found solace and renewal in the fresh air and quiet of plains, forests, and mountains. He spent almost a year on his African safari. His book was the first by an American to popularize the idea of recreational travel in Africa (still considered a daunting prospect by many Americans today). The prose is easy to read and makes one want to keep reading. Also of interest is the appendix containing the list of books (the "pigskin library") that he took with him on his safari.

Roosevelt also promoted the outdoor life and its benefits in "A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open" (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916)