The Great Safari: The Lives of George and Joy Adamson, Famous for Born Free
In Swahili, the word safari means "journey"; this joint biography traces the long and turbulent travels of George and Joy Adamson from their Christmas 1942 meeting in a remote Kenyan town to their bizarre murders years later. House, a former managing director of general publishing at the British publisher William Collins, first met Joy in 1959 when she had brought her manuscript of Born Free to Collins; he later met George in 1975 and often visited him in Kenya. Unlike Caroline Cass's rather superficial Joy Adamson: Behind the Mask ( LJ 9/1/93), House draws on the actual letters and diaries of the Adamsons to create full-fleshed portraits of complex human beings caught in a difficult marriage. While Cass is more thorough in detailing Joy's early years in Austria, House is more complete in describing her later conservation efforts. Besides Elsa, the lion cub, Joy had rescued baby elephants, leopards, and cheetahs. House also pays close attention to George's efforts to reintroduce lions into the wild. Recommended for all collections.- Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.