Customer Reviews

Elephants and Ivory: True Tales of Hunting and Adventure (Resnick Library of African Adventure)

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John Alfred Jordan tried many things. Farming, searching for gold, even marriage. But in the end he kept going back to hunting. He just could not stay in one place for too long and he tells his story to John Prebble. The adventures and memories of the great hunter crafted and shaped by the skills and tools of a great writer make for a great book. And this is one of them.
Mr. Jordan did everything, from almost getting killed to getting in trouble with the law. Again and again. But the book is not just about hunting. It is overflowing with history, culture, information about the tribes, the land, the animals. If you have already red it may I suggest White Hunters:The Golden Age of African Safaris which is about the same subject and also A Company of Planters: Confessions of a Colonial Rubber Planter in 1950s Malaya which has the same feel to it.

I would rate this splendid account of colonial era African Safari with the best in the field. John Alfred Jordan, whose tales are told here, did not actually write the book. Instead, the book was written by John Prebble, an author by trade, based upon Jordan's remembrances some fifty years later. The quality of the writing in this book calls to mind the classic "Out of Africa". To quote from the book's final page: "If I regret the passing of my Africa it is a peculiar and personal regret, and one that does not make me bitter. It is the way you are sorry that you can no longer do the things you did in your youth."