Philip Caputo is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author and journalist. He has written more than 15 books, including Ghosts of Tsavo: Stalking the Mystery Lions of East Africa, Some Rise by Sin, and A Rumor of War, his bestselling memoir about the Vietnam War. To learn more, visit philipcaputo.com or follow @PhilipCaputo on Twitter.
"A sprightly and informative travel adventure."
"Caputo gives us Africa in all of its parched and scrubby beauty, a
land raw and primitive, inhabited by jakals and hyenas, acacia
trees and watering holes--and, of course, lions that occasionally
prey on homo sapiens."
"Ghosts of Tsavo makes for great summer reading."
"A sprightly and informative travel adventure."
"Caputo gives us Africa in all of its parched and scrubby beauty, a
land raw and primitive, inhabited by jakals and hyenas, acacia
trees and watering holes--and, of course, lions that occasionally
prey on homo sapiens."
"Ghosts of Tsavo makes for great summer reading."
In 1898, two maneless male lions killed and devoured 135 Indian and African workers constructing a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya. It took Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson, the engineer in charge of the project, nine months to hunt and kill the beasts, an ordeal recounted in his 1907 book, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, and later the subject of two films, 1952's Bwana Devil and 1996's The Ghost and the Darkness. A century later, the story of Ghost and Darkness still fascinates and terrifies. Were they just rogue lions, or were they the "missing genetic link" between the prehistoric cave cats who hunted early humans and the modern African lion? Novelist Caputo (The Voyage) seeks answers to this intriguing question as he accompanies two separate expeditions to study the maneless lions of Tsavo. Unfortunately, the resulting book is a frustrating mix of personal travel narrative and scientific speculation, with no definite conclusions. Admitting his ambivalence, Caputo writes: "I feel divided, half of me hungry for scientific truth, the other half seeking to embrace the mythic. It occurs to me that I haven't come close to solving the mystery of Tsavo's lions, probably because my heart hasn't been in it." Still, Caputo's muscular prose vividly captures the beauty and dangers of Africa, and there will be demand because of his name. For larger adventure and natural history collections. Wilda Williams, "Library Journal" Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
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