Amazon.com description: Product Description: Publisher's notes: "The golden age of safaris spanned eighty years, a time when such legendary hunters as R.J. Cunninghame, Philip Percival, J.A. Hunter, Karamoja Bell, and the romantic Denys Finch Hatton roamed the African bush. They inspired Ernest Hemingway, Robert Ruark, and Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), whose stories became movies starring Clark Gable, Gregory Peck and Robert Redford. Romantic and frequently reckless, these professional hunters were witnesses to the richest wildlife spectacle the earth has ever known....By 1910 Nairobi's dashing white hunters were in the ascendancy. Early safari clients, such as Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the Prince of Wales who would reign briefly as King Edward VII, came to the field kitted out with made-to-measure jodhpurs and bush jackets fitted with sewn-in cartridge loops. They sailed from New York or London on German Lloyd steamers and were met by deluxe trains at Mombasa for the journey into the heart of big-game country. In the first book to tell the complete story of the great African safaris, Brian Herne evokes the harmony that once existed between hunters and such magnificent animals as elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo, and rhino - the big five - that roamed the high plateaus of East Africa in large numbers before poaching and politics intervened. Beyond the glamour of hunting safaris, the author shows the intricate connection between hunting and conservation and provides evidence that elephant and rhino populations are beginning to rebound after years of devastation."