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Between 1910 and 1940, when Frank Buck, the big jungle man, did most of his work, cruelty toward wild animals was generally condoned in the name of "hunting" or "sport."
That his trademark motto, "Bring 'em back alive," made him famous, however, indicates that even in his day human consciousness was high enough to appreciate his respect for animals. Today this consciousness is so widespread that no one could become a hero of his stature by trapping jungle animals for profit.
But he understood animals and respected them, even displayed toward them the care of a mother for her child. When they were injured or sick, he personally tended them, a risky business. A 600-pound tapir he was treating almost killed him. A python saw him as a meal, and a cobra spewed deadly venom in his eyes. Attacked by another cobra, he threw his coat over the snake and pounced on it. He held it beneath him as it wriggled to get free until aides could get a grip on its head and pull it out, like a bird extracting a worm from the ground. The python that had him in its grip was one of the very few he had to kill. He managed to get one arm free enough to reach his sidearm; then he put three rounds in the giant reptile's brain.
From his headquarters at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, he operated a collecting network that spanned the lush jungles of Malaya, Borneo, Sumatra and India. Over the years, he brought back hundreds of thousands of birds and animals of all kinds for sale to zoos, circuses and private collectors. In 1922, he provided Dallas with an entire zoo of more than 500 specimens. In 1948, he returned to his hometown of Gainesville, Texas, to dedicate the Frank Buck Zoo and the Frank Buck Zoological Society.
From Mr. Buck's eight books, Steven Lehrer has selected the "best" of the material. He has fine sensibilities as an editor. However, the books are so full of good, old-fashioned, movie-serial-type adventures in wild, exotic settings, that Mr. Lehrer could have closed his eyes and picked 19 chapters that would make a good collection. The surprising thing is that, until now, no one else has.
What few could have done better, however, is write the illuminating introduction summarizing Mr. Buck's early interest in animals and birds as a boy in Plano and along Turtle Creek, and his brief dalliance with crime, marriage and other enterprises before setting out on his lifelong search for "the source of the wind, the mouth of the river, the oceans to which the fish swam, and the far lands to which the birds flew."
Free-lance writer and reviewer Tom Dodge lives in Midlothian; his new book is Tom Dodge Talks About Texas.
38-1532 QL61 99-86898 CIP
Buck, Frank. Bring 'Em Back Alive: The Best of Frank Buck, ed. by Steven Lehrer. Texas Tech, 2000. 248p bibl index afp ISBN 0-89672-430-1, $28.95
In many ways, this is a delightful book. Buck was a familiar and heroic figure to many growing up in the 1930s and 1940s; the numerous illustrations recapture those days. The great zoos of the day owed much to him, partly for the specimens he obtained for them but even more for the publicity he generated and shared. His exploits could not and should not be repeated today, but that should not detract from the sense of adventure his stories evoke. His persona was mirrored in the white hunter in King Kong (the Fay Wray version), but his real life adventures were even more thrilling. The comments by Lehrer (Mount Sinai School of Medicine) are interesting and useful, and his choices of episodes from various of Buck's books are well done. All in all, this is an extremely entertaining book, illustrating a different time and written in a way that brings that time to life. General readers. -F W. Yow, emeritus, Kenyon College
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Having had the experience of combat in winter conditions, I marvel at the detail Frank writes. He also had combat experience in winter conditions and it is evident in his book.
The detail he picks up is the greatest. One can feel the total despair of the fighting men. He underlines the old statement the "war is hell".
Frank also brought out the conditions on the home front where those left to do the farming were old men and women.
The love story had to be a story that was often repeated in those times.
I highly recommend this book as a history lesson.
After the war, Dr. Irgang (the author) travelled extensively through Eastern Europe and the USSR (Russia) to become well acquainted and informed about the Germans battle for Stalingrad. His personal experiences in combat gave him an advantage over other would be authors who might have tackled the story of the greatest military disaster in our time
Not only does Irgang tell a wonderful story but he tells it with a touch of warmth in relating the human side of the Germans and true grit when discussing the Russian tactics and concerns. His command of the English language makes it possible for one to read and understand a completely foreign story.
For a great book for either personal use or as a gift to any veteran of WWII I strongly recommend "Beneath the Snows of Stalingrad".
In his latest novel, "Beneath the Snows of Stalingrad", Mr. Irgang tells the story of World War II from the German point of view. Told through the experiences of three young Germans, this novel is particularly effective in drawing the reader into the inner workings of his characters. By the time the novel ends, the reader has lived their lives and seen the horrors of war through these three young people. The characters are wonderfully drawn, with great depth. The situations are plausible and emotionally taut. Mr. Irgang tells of their daily lives, their hopes and fears, not just about the days when the bullets fly, and so the reader gets the feel for the rhythms of their lives. This only serves to heighten the drama near the end of the book, when they are participating in, and witnessing, the final collapse of Hitler's Reich. Mr. Irgang traveled to the sites in his novel, and conducted a great deal of research. As such, it has a great deal of importance as a historical novel. He writes of war as only a man who has seen a lot of it can. His meticulous details of battlefields and patrols and death put the reader there as very few books can.
The theme, that an entire generation of young men and women are betrayed by fate and robbed of their futures, is one we would do well to heed today. How many vibrant young souls still lie under the snows of Stalingrad today, in unmarked mass graves, because of the madness of the Nazi regime? I recommend this book very highly. More now than ever, it is important for people to read about the human consequences of war, and to pray for peace.