Here are 100 books that Between Man and Beast fans have personally recommended if you like
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Peter Allison became a safari guide by accident. Healthy fear is outweighed by overwhelming curiosity, which has led to misadventures on all continents, detailed in the books Whatever You Do, Don’t Run (A New York Times Notable Book of the Year); Don’t Look Behind You; and How To Walk A Puma.
Yes, Lloyd is a friend of mine but despite the number of campfires we have sat around swapping tales there were many in this book I had never heard. Like all good guides, Lloyd is a natural storyteller, but he is also a great reader and that has a positive effect on this, his first book. His writing shines, the stories move along briskly like a startled warthog, and in no time it is over and you want more.
Africa can be scary. And thrilling. Often, that's the same thing!Lloyd Camp takes you on an evocative journey through some of the wildest places in Africa as he re-lives colourful vignettes from his adventurous childhood and long career as a safari guide. This is a charming, funny, thoughtful and often hair-raising series of short stories that illustrate Lloyd's enthusiastic delight in leading his clients into the wilderness areas of Africa. Forthright yet light-hearted, Lloyd's suspenseful narrative emphasises both his love of the African bush and the courage and resilience of the Africans that he encounters in his odysseys. In the…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
In a family of readers, my older sister was fascinated by the American Revolution, so I became a reader under that influence, gulping down biographies for kids. I trained as an academic historian but never really wanted to write academic history. Instead, I wanted to bottle that what-if-felt-like magic that I'd felt when I read those books as a kid. I became a journalist but still felt the pull of the past. So I wound up in that in-between slice of journalists who try to write history for readers like me, more interested in people than in complex arguments about historical cause and effect.
This book gave me a world I'd barely known about, a villain who personified evil and a cast of characters from the famous (but murderous) explorer Henry Morton Stanley to uncelebrated people of conscience who fought Leopold's monstrous scheme.
So it's a fabulous story, but along the way, it also taught me a great deal about the history of Africa, a continent about which we Americans know so little.
Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize, King Leopold's Ghost is the true and haunting account of Leopold's brutal regime and its lasting effect on a ruined nation. With an introduction by award-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver.
In the late nineteenth century, when the great powers in Europe were tearing Africa apart and seizing ownership of land for themselves, King Leopold of Belgium took hold of the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. In his devastatingly barbarous colonization of this area, Leopold stole its rubber and ivory, pummelled its people and set up a ruthless regime that would reduce…
Peter Allison became a safari guide by accident. Healthy fear is outweighed by overwhelming curiosity, which has led to misadventures on all continents, detailed in the books Whatever You Do, Don’t Run (A New York Times Notable Book of the Year); Don’t Look Behind You; and How To Walk A Puma.
Godwin’s brilliant memoir of growing up in what was then Southern Rhodesia, fighting in a war, then defending as a lawyer some of those who he’d fought against is told with enormous wit and great literary flair. It’s a travesty that no film has ever been made of this book, but perhaps no one would believe the stories.
Mukiwa opens with Peter Godwin, six years old, describing the murder of his neighbor by African guerillas, in 1964, pre-war Rhodesia. Godwin's parents are liberal whites, his mother a governement-employed doctor, his father an engineer. Through his innocent, young eyes, the story of the beginning of the end of white rule in Africa unfolds. The memoir follows Godwin's personal journey from the eve of war in Rhodesia to his experience fighting in the civil war that he detests to his adventures as a journalist in the new state of Zimbabwe, covering the bloody return to Black rule. With each transition…
Mia Lark is running out of options. There is only one way to change the score: the fantasy planet Revivium.
Armed with the powerful magic in the helm and the friendly AI, Hex that goes with it, Mia throws caution out the window. It’s time to find the main guildhall…
For more than two decades, I have been travelling to the wild places of this planet looking for stories. Africa in all its diversity has always been my first love. Whether I’m off the grid in the Kalahari, or scanning the far horizon of the Serengeti looking for lions, Africa feels like home to me, and I’m passionate about finding, and then telling the stories of the people I meet, and the wildlife I encounter, along the way. And driving me every step of the way is my great belief in the power of the written word and that of a good story to transform the way we think about, and interact with, the natural world.
Funny and wise in equal measure, A Primate’s Memoir is a window on baboon social dynamics with plenty of forays into the world of safari tourism that he observes from askance. Sapolsky has since gone on to become one of the science world’s keenest observers of human behaviour, and his portrayals of baboon and human interactions are priceless.
In the tradition of Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, Robert Sapolsky, a foremost science writer and recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, tells the mesmerizing story of his twenty-one years in remote Kenya with a troop of Savannah baboons.
“I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla,” writes Robert Sapolsky in this witty and riveting chronicle of a scientist’s coming-of-age in remote Africa.
An exhilarating account of Sapolsky’s twenty-one-year study of a troop of rambunctious baboons in Kenya, A Primate’s Memoir interweaves serious…
I have learned about the nature of magic and the mythical firsthand. I have always been a seeker, fiercely curious and an avid reader to try to understand the world so as to find myself and my destiny. Wise women appeared to guide my path as I quested the heroine’s journey with its many helpers and spirits, its coincidences, and its marvels. When I dreamt about the Roma, I knew the story was important; I attended UCLA and got to work. My passion has never dwindled during the 20 years it took to manifest the Destiny's Consent book series.
I think more than anything, I loved the way she described everything. Her language is as if her words were first sent to her heart and then to her soul before they came onto the page. The warmth and the power are overwhelming in her style. It is obvious she loved grandly Africa and its denizens, and as a reader, I couldn’t help but feel the same.
I love heroines in exotic places and situations, especially if it is much of their own makings or seemingly destiny. This book is a memoir of a tomboy girl in East Africa, so even though it is all true, it feels epic.
I could really relate to Beryl as a girl with her animals. (Growing up, I loved and collected animals from nature, too.) Beryl grew up with a zebra for a pet, horses for friends, and, of course, the most loyal dog.
WEST WITH THE NIGHT appeared on 13 bestseller lists on first publication in 1942. It tells the spellbinding story of Beryl Markham -- aviator, racehorse trainer, fascinating beauty -and her life in the Kenya of the 1920s and 30s.
Markham was taken to Kenya at the age of four. As an adult she was befriended by Denys Finch-Hatton, the big-game hunter of OUT OF AFRICA fame, who took her flying in his airplane. Thrilled by the experience, Markham went on to become the first woman in Kenya to receive a commercial pilot's license.
I am an author specializing in nature, travel, and adventure writing. I’ve been fortunate to travel to many of the places featured in my books – including Botswana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. I even to travelled to Morocco to study the art of storytelling with the last of the great storytellers. I’ve always been intrigued by stories that tell a personal journey about overcoming obstacles, especially if the story takes the reader to exotic places. So no wonder I jumped at the opportunity to co-author a book with a game ranger and conservationist in Africa that combines historical perspectives, larger-than-life characters, and dangerous experiences with wildlife.
I remember my first encounter with African wildlife. I was standing in front of a museum diorama, facing a lion standing full height, its glass eyes gleaming. These displays were crafted so carefully, the animals posed so perfectly, the backgrounds painted so realistically. But who turned these dead animals into works of art? This book describes the life of the man who traveled the world to find and preserve the best specimens. Carl Akeley’s journey is both gruesome and fascinating.
In this epic account of an extraordinary life lived during remarkable times, Jay Kirk follows the adventures of legendary explorer and taxidermist Carl Akeley, who revolutionized taxidermy and environmental conservation and created the famed African Hall at New York's Museum of Natural History. Akeley risked death time and again in the jungles of Africa as he stalked animals for his dioramas and hobnobbed with outsized personalities of the era, such as Theodore Roosevelt and P. T. Barnum. Kingdom Under Glass is "a rollicking biography…an epic adventure…[and] a beguiling novelistic portrait of a man and an era straining to hear the…
Winner of the 2024 New Mexico - Arizona Book Award.
In this deeply researched novel of America's most celebrated outlaw, Mark Warren sheds light on the human side of Billy the Kid and reveals the intimate stories of the lesser-known players in his legendary life of crime. Warren's fictional composer…
I didn’t realize I enjoyed this dimension of a story until I noted how many of my most enjoyable reads had this in common. I enjoy the emphasis on relationships and characterization, but the element of distance adds depth to these relationships, making for a page-turning read!
In this non-fiction piece that unfolds like a novel, Hammer takes the reader around the globe, providing much detail on the terrain, flora, and fauna of many disparate biomes.
The reason for the detail and the varied settings is the pursuit of a thief, always quick to dart off to the next deal, to the next domain, wherein a prize might be claimed, smuggled, and sold. Without knowing each other, a relationship develops between the investigator and his elusive perp.
A "well-written, engaging detective story" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) about a rogue who trades in rare birds and their eggs-and the wildlife detective determined to stop him.
On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain's Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were fourteen rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales.
So begins a "vivid tale of obsession and international derring-do" (Publishers Weekly), following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race…
I’ve spent 20 years researching Antarctica and polar history to learn about my father’s experiences on Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s III expedition or the USASE in 1939-41. I’ve been passionate about art, travel, and learning about other cultures for most of my life. I’m excited to say, I’ve worked on all the continents! My interests led me to a career as a leadership consultant, executive coach and team facilitator. Since 2020, I have had a dream job working with Antarctic scientists and teams, assisting them to manage stress and conflict in the field. With a lifetime of experience in the performing arts, my work inspires leaders to unlock their full potential and drive meaningful change.
I am excited by the actual diary entries and art work from a wide range of essential expeditions. This gorgeous tabletop book reinforced my desire to travel the world. The famous explorers, many of them unknown to me, captured the breadth and depth of distance places.
I feel a kinship with the documentation of bravery and experiences from around the world.
The sketchbook has been the one constant in explorers' kits for centuries of adventure. Often private, they are records of immediate experiences and discoveries, and in their pages we can see what the explorers themselves encountered. This remarkable book showcases 70 such sketchbooks, kept by intrepid men and women as they journeyed perilous and unknown environments—frozen wastelands, high mountains, barren deserts, and dense rainforests—with their senses wide open. Figures such as Charles Darwin and Sir Edmund Hillary are joined here by lesser-known explorers such as Adela Breton, who braved the jungles of Mexico to make a record of Mayan monuments.…
My 15 seasons at Grand Canyon inspired me to understand its story of revelation, which led to a fascination with the history of exploration overall. This has resulted in a series of books about explorers, places explored, and a conceptual scaffolding by which to understand it all: a geologist of the American West (Grove Karl Gilbert); Antarctica (The Ice); revisiting the Rim with better conceptual gear, How the Canyon Became Grand; and using its mission as a narrative spine, Voyager: Exploration, Space, and Third Great Age of Discovery. The grand sweep deserved a grand summary, so I’ve ended with The Great Ages of Discovery.
A few days out of high school, I found myself on a forest fire crew at the North Rim of Grand Canyon, and returned for 15 seasons. The more I pondered the Canyon, the more I wanted to learn about why this strange landscape was valued, which led me to William Goetzmann, who became my grad school advisor.
New Lands, New Men is the third and final volume of a trilogy Goetzmann wrote on the theme. (His second book, Exploration and Empire, won a Pulitzer.) It’s a bit looser, willing to play with the material, and full of the quirky as well as the renown. Its organizing concept that exploration rekindled in the 18th century (with a significant input from modern science) is a major innovation in a field usually devoted to stirring tales of individual adventure and discovery.
In New Lands, New Men, the third volume in his award-winning Exploration Trilogy, one of America’s leading historians tells the dramatic story of three centuries of exploration that witnessed Europeans exploring the Pacific and Northwest, Americans setting out across their own immense continent, and finally, Americans exploring new worlds: the oceans, Japan, the polar regions.
Spanning the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, the Second Great Age of Discovery was marked by the Enlightenment’s ideals of science and progress. Explorers from James Cook to George Catlin, from Charles Wilkes to Matthew Maury, trained as scientists intent on precise observation and gathered…
Ramon Ramirez’s Dog is a collection of essays written over the years about the adventures and misadventures, mostly outside but occasionally inside the diplomatic career of a U.S. ambassador. Common threads weaving the stories together are a desire for a life well-lived, balancing career with family and friends, keeping physically…
Meaningful communications with people through life, books, and films have always given me a certain kind of mental nirvana of being transported to a place of delight. I see fine writing as an informative and entertaining conversation with a stranger I just met on a plane who has interesting things to say about the world. Books of narrative merit in mathematics and science are my strangers eager to be met. For me, the best narratives are those that bring me to places I have never been, to tell me things I have not known, and to keep me reading with the feeling of being alive in a human experience.
For me, this book was an adventure. I felt as if I was on an expedition to Virginia with Harriot teaching me astronomy and navigation. There I was, infatuated with rainbows and imagining myself scrutinizing scientific wonders of elliptical planetary motion, atomic theory of matter, and how cannonballs could be stacked to fill space. I found myself with Harriot back in 1591 searching for a sphere-packing formula, an old problem questioning the most stable way to stack cannonballs on ships. Thomas Harriot is a fast-moving biography packed with the world- and mind-changing curiosities.
Thomas Harriot (1560-1621) was a pioneer in both the figurative and literal sense. Navigational adviser and loyal friend to Sir Walter Ralegh, Harriot took part in the first expedition to colonize Virginia. Not only was he responsible for getting Ralegh's ships safely to harbor in the New World, once there he became the first European to acquire a working knowledge of an indigenous language (he also began a lifelong love of tobacco, which may have been his undoing). Harriot's abilities were seemingly unlimited and nearly awe-inspiring. He was the first to use a telescope to map the moon's craters, and,…
