Mr. Hornaday's War How a Peculiar Victorian Zookeeper Waged a Lonely Crusade for Wildlife That Changed the World

by Bechtel, Stefan

• ISBN13: 9780807006351
• ISBN10: 0807006351
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-05-15
• Publisher: Beacon Press

Summary

He was complex, quirky, pugnacious, and difficult. He seemed to create enemies wherever he went, even among his friends. A fireplug of a man who stood only five feet eight inches in his stocking feet, he had an outsized ambition to make his mark on the world. And he did. William Temple Hornaday (1854-1937) was probably the most famous conservationist of the nineteenth century, second only to his great friend and ally Theodore Roosevelt. Hornaday's great passion was protecting wild things and wild places, and he spent most of his adult life in a state of war on their behalf, as a taxidermist and museum collector; as the founder and first director of the National Zoo in Washington, DC; as director of the Bronx Zoo for thirty years; and as the author of nearly two dozen books on conservation and wildlife. But in Mr. Hornaday's War,the long-overdue biography of Hornaday by journalist Stefan Bechtel, the grinding contradictions of Hornaday's life also become clear. Though he is credited with saving the American bison from extinction, he began his career as a rifleman and trophy hunter who led "the last buffalo hunt" into the Montana Territory. And what happened in 1906 at the Bronx Zoo, when Hornaday displayed an African man in a cage, shows a side of him that is as baffling as it is repellent. This gripping new book takes an honest look at a fascinating and enigmatic man.

Author Biography

Stefan Bechtel is the author of ten books, his most recent including Tornado Hunter and Roar of the Heavens. A founding editor of Men’s Health magazine, his work has appeared in Esquire and the Washington Post, among other publications. He lives in Free Union, Virginia.

Table of Contents

Note to Reader	p. ix
William Temple Hornaday: A Life in Brief	p. xi
Prologue: The Fear	p. xiii
The Awakening
His Name Was Dauntless	p. 3
A Melancholy Insanity	p. 17
The Second Civil War	p. 23
Souvenir of a Lost World	p. 30
The Last Buffalo Hunt	p. 35
A Mysterious Stranger	p. 47
"A Nobility Beyond All Compare"	p. 60
The Heedless Hunter
Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa	p. 75
Yearning, Too Much, for Fame	p. 89
The Empress Josephine	p. 98
Man-Eaters of the Animallai Hills	p. 105
Darwin's Firestorm	p. 118
"A Thief in die Night"	p. 131
A Dream Deferred	p. 143
Scandal at the Zoo	p. 150
Wildlife Warrior
The Dark Shadow	p. 171
Empire of the Buffalo	p. 181
Our Vanishing Wildlife	p. 191
Two Hundred Years of War	p. 204
Epilogue: His Indomitable Persistence	p. 212
Acknowledgments	p. 220
Notes	p. 221
Bibliography	p. 236
Index	p. 243
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