A good biography shows readers the importance of a person they didn’t even know existed.
“Homesick for a World Unknown” by Miriam Horn, who is coming to Concord on May 14, is one such work, and it carries extra weight here because the subject lives in New Hampshire.
Horn’s book is the first biography of George B. Schaller, who is often described as the most important field conservationist of our time even though he’s largely unknown to the general public. Schaller all but invented the idea of studying large mammals for long periods in the wild and was the mentor of such world-renowned wildlife scientists as Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey.
Among other things, Schaller’s work on three continents led him to sound the earliest alarms about the “great dying” afflicting the world as species go extinct, an alarm that helped preserve Congo’s mountain gorillas, India’s tigers and China’s pandas in the wild. He wrote a dozen books and scores of articles about his work and the need for conservation, but his avoidance of traditional publicity has given him a very low profile.
Horn, an award-winning writer whose earlier books deal with the realities of modern conservation, said she approached Schaller to do a biography after repeatedly hearing wildlife biologists say they were astonished nobody had written one already.
Aside from telling the story of Schaller’s life, it presents his roadmap to conservation.
Schaller, 92, has lived near Hanover for years; his son, Eric, teaches at Dartmouth College.
The New Hampshire connection is why Horn, in the midst of a national book tour of major cities that has produced stories and reviews in places like the New York Times, is coming to Concord.
Aside from her books Horn has produced two documentary films, worked at the Environmental Defense Fund and the U.S. Forest Service and written for magazines and newspapers.
The presentation begins at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 14, at Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St.
