THE END OF THE GAME / PETER BEARTD

This book describes the origins, history, and prospects of big game inAfrica.Researched, photographed, and compiled over 20 years, Peter Beard's"End of the Game" tells the tale of the enterprisers, explorers,missionaries, and big-game hunters whose quests for adventure and"progress" were to change the face of Africa in the 20th century. Thislandmark volume is assembled from hundreds of historical photographs andwritings, starting with the building of the Mombasa Railroad ("The LunaticLine") and the opening-up of darkest Africa. The stories behind the heroicfigures in Beard's work - Theodore Roosevelt, Frederick Courtney Selous,Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), Denys Finch-Hatton (the romantic hero of Outof Africa), Philip Percival, J. A. Hunter, Ernest Hemingway, and J. H.Patterson (who became famous as the relentless hunter of the "Man-EatingLions of Tsavo") - are all contextualized by Beard's own photographs ofthe enormous region.Shot in the 1960s and '70s in the Tsavo lowlandsduring the elephant-habitat crisis and then in Uganda parks, Beard'sstudies of elephant and hippo population dynamics document the inevitableoverpopulation and starvation of tens of thousands of elephants andrhinos. Originally published in 1965 and updated in 1977, this classic isresurrected by Taschen with rich duotone reproduction and a new foreword.Touching on themes such as distance from nature, density and stress, lossof common sense, and global emergencies, this seminal picture history ofeastern Africa in the first half of the 20th century shows us the originsof the wildlife crisis on the continent, a phenomenon which bears aremarkable resemblance to the overpopulation and climate crises we facetoday.