The End of the Game

Peter Beard Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1963 (revised and reprinted in pa-perback, 1988) .

A heartbreaking account of the hunting and widespread destruction of elephant in Africa by photographer Peter Beard, with stunning photographs taken over the space of 20 years. Beard, after graduating from Yale in 1961, settled in Kenya on land adjoining the farm of Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen, author of Out Of Africa). In this book he tells the story of big game hunting in Africa. Most fascinating is his account of the Blixens and Denys Finch-Hatton, and the handwritten diary (photographed, not transcribed) of the railway engineer J.H. Patterson recounting his killing of the man-eating lions of Tsavo (a story told in the film The Ghost and the Darkness). A book of many riches but finally a tragedy, The End of the Game says a great deal about what went wrong, about how and why mankind is losing a world of life.

Dr. George Johnson