Author Description

Product DescriptionThis volume gives an illustrated account of Peter Matthiessen's travels in East Africa from the Sudan, through Uganda and Kenya to Tanzania. He describes the wildlife and the game reserves of the Serengeti, Maasai Mara and the Ngorongoro Crater, and the archaeological sites at Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli in the Rift Valley. During these travels he meets Iain and Oria Douglas-Hamilton, George Adamson and George Schaller, who all dedicated their lives to studying and protecting animals. The photographs by Eliot Porter show details of human and natural history, the daily lives of wild herdmen and stone-age aborigines, and a records of the animals and landscapes of East Africa. Peter Matthiessen is the author of "At Play in the Fields of the Lord", "Blue Meridian", "Far Tortuga", "The Snow Leopard", "Killing Mister Watson", "African Silences" and "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse".From AudioFilePeter Matthiessen traveled around Africa, including the Sudan, Kenya, and Tanzania, to see its wildlife. His account of his travels starts with the tree of the title and weaves ancestral stories and local history into a travelogue. In the book's best moments, Dion Graham's deep voice adds a poetic quality to the author's descriptive writing as he talks about watching wild elephants or buffalo. Graham also brings life to Matthiessen's meetings with Africans and Europeans. Still, some of the background comes across as dry. The author's introduction acknowledges that a lot has happened since the book's original 1972 publication. With the help of Graham's strong reading, this is still an interesting look at the continent. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, MaineFrom the Publisher7 1.5-hour cassettesAbout the AuthorPETER MATTHIESSEN has written eight novels, a book of short stories, and, from his career as a naturalist and environmental activist, numerous acclaimed works of nonfiction. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1974. He has won two National Book Awards, including the 2008 award for fiction for his bookShadow Country.From Library JournalThese dual Matthiessens, which launch the publisher's new "Nature Classics" line, profile the relationship between humans and nature in East Africa (The Tree, LJ 12/1/72) and in the United States (Wildlife, LJ 1/15/60). The latter volume has been expanded and updated for this edition.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.ReviewFew nature books called 'classic' are as deserving of the appellation as this one, for no one writes about Africa with quite the same insight and enthusiasm as Peter Matthiessen....his grasp of people, events, history, science, and conservation is exceptional....With his sympathy for and knowledge of the tribal peoples and the wildlife of Africa, Matthiessen has an uncanny ability to make us see a raw and untouched landscape where only those people who have adapted their lives to the patterns of nature truly belong. This is a place where we are the intruder, and it takes a rare writer to make us see it that way. --Kirkus (UK)Stunning....The Africa [Matthiessen] evokes is finally timeless, majestic, throbbing with life, indivisible. --Saturday ReviewThe lush prose casts its own spell on a landscape observed with awe and inexplicable sadness....[Matthiessen's] narrative powers are considerable.... --Kirkus Reviews