HOMESICK FOR A WORLD UNKNOWN

Comprehensive biography of the renowned scientist and adventurer.

A conservationist, Horn accompanied George Schaller on expeditions to India, where “locals still sought his guidance on how to resolve life-or-death conflicts between humans and wildlife—pressed into closer proximity there than anywhere on Earth,” and to the Arizona-Mexico border, where President Donald Trump’s border wall threatens the region’s jaguars. Horn was not the first to watch Schaller at work: He taught Jane Goodall how to study primates, mentored big-cat biologist and writer Alan Rabinowitz, and guided Peter Matthiessen across the Himalayas in search of the elusive snow leopard. Yet, by Horn’s fluent account, Schaller prefers the company of animals to people, a preference perhaps born of a fraught early life, his father a German diplomat during the years of the Third Reich, his mother an American, bullied for his mixed parentage throughout his childhood. Horn has a biological explanation: Zoologists recount that play is essential to socialization, and Schaller grew up a loner with a deep connection to animals and not people. “Trying to safely navigate a world that fears you…is almost like dropping into another species,” she writes. His alienation was science’s gain. Studying animal populations in nearly three dozen countries, he contributed immeasurably to our understanding of animal societies and minds (“Lions possessed theory of mind: the ability to inhabit the perspectives and intentions of others and anticipate their responses”). On top of that, he was an alpinist of distinction who, wrote photographer and mountain climber Galen Rowell, “has spent more time in remote Asian mountains than any mountaineer I know.” Now 92, Schaller is of a kind who will not come again, Horn argues—for instance, in his knowledge of animal signs, which has been made obsolete by both technology and the disappearance of so many species.

A fine account of a life well lived, to the benefit of all who love animals.