Reviews
Schaller’s commitment to nurturing “home-grown” scientists embodies the larger lesson of his life: to put the subject before the scientist, and to serve the lands and species he studied.
The author handles the richness of the material beautifully, using Schaller’s own words to build a picture, which she then expands with perceptiveness, tact and an elegance of phrasing
Homesick for a World Unknown by Miriam Horn is selected by The New York Times for their list of 6 books recommended by their critics and editors.
In her engaging, lyrical “Homesick for a World Unknown,” Miriam Horn tells the story of the famed naturalist George Schaller.
Timothy Andrés Pabon’s restrained narration mirrors Schaller’s own quiet, methodical approach, allowing the extraordinary scope of his life and work to unfold naturally
Armed with Schaller’s report, Olaus Murie persuaded President Eisenhower to sign an executive order protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
“Homesick for A World Unknown” a Wall Street Journal Editor’s Choice
“…a scientist as original and unrelenting in his own quest [as Stephen Hawking] … considered by many the most effective conservationist of the past century”
In her meticulously researched, gripping biography, Horn conveys how Schaller’s work in the Congo revolutionized our understanding of gorillas and, more broadly, of methodology for ethological field work.
The first scientist to perform detailed, sustained field studies of once-inaccessible animals in the wild, from Serengeti lions to mountain gorillas, Schaller revealed the lives of creatures long thought monstrous or mysterious.