This well written book documents the evolution of Safaris from the early Boer settlers through the modern camera hunters.

The author, Bartle Bull, wrote a very interesting overview of Safari, both in fact and in legend. Combining the histories of famous professional hunters and adventurers along with the mythological "Great White Hunter" of the silver screen, he brings a very candid and personal account based on his experiences in the bush. Highly recommended if you can find a copy, one of the best I've ever read.

Bartle Bull knows about Africa, having spent many of his formative years there among its beautiful places and with some of Africa's more interesting people. As proof that all of this was not wasted on the author, he has written a marvelously detailed account of the history of the most commonly known of African institutions, the Safari. In Safari a Chronicle of Adventure, Bartle Bull starts with the first travels of Europeans in Southern Africa, on their own and for themselves, and shows how Safaris evolved into a vehicle for Ivory Hunters and explorers and finally into a business of its own. During this history trip we meet many interesting people along the way and find out how their African experiences changed their lives. At times the author takes us on some side trips explaining the lives of travelers, writers,white hunters, even Presidents and movie stars before and after their safaris. In many ways the history of the safari is the history of the European experience in Africa and the book rises to this task by giving us a sideward glance at Africa outside the safari business.The book is also a record of the exploitation of the continent wildlife and how the fortunes of people changed as the game became scarce. In all the work is well crafted with Bartel Bull's usual attention to detail and his flare for adventure that lets all of us travel on safari if only from the comfort of our easy chairs.

Good, but I had trouble keeping up with the names of the white guys. Seems like someone is always leaving and someone is always arriving, the pictures only confuses me more, because I would try in vain to match up the name with a picture.

Russia's Lake Baikal is the largest, deepest, oldest, and cleanest freshwater lake in the world. It's size is greater than all of five of the North American Great Lakes combined and home to more than 1,500 species of life known nowhere else in the world. Bartle Bull led the first expedition to ever circumnavigate Lake Baikal. While on this epic sojourn, he and his team mapped the devastating impact of human development and industry on this wild and pristine ecosystem. Around The Sacred Sea: Mongolia And Lake Baikal on Horseback is the incredible and riveting story of this valiant trek, an exploration of Baikal's history, ecology, and culture, and well as an informative and engaging survey of incredible and unique plant and animal life. Beautifully written, funny, occasionally suspenseful, Around The Sacred Sea is a unique, engaging, informative, exciting, page-turner of an uncommon, true-life adventure story, ideal reading for the armchair traveler and inspiring for the globe trotter set.

Around The Sacred Sea tells of the author's extrodinary feat of riding horseback completely around Lake Baikal.The book draws you in right from the prologue. Bartle Bull is an excellent writer, who not only describes in beautiful detail the sights, sounds, people and animals he and his friends encounter during the expedition, through his words he brings the reader along with him. I have never been even near Lake Baikal, but I feel like I have. There were moments of danger that had me flipping ahead in the book to make sure everything turned out alright. There were sad moments and there were drunk moments and there were irate moments and there were happy moments. And I felt every single one of them. The book is also illustrated with beautiful photographs taken during the adventure. I loved this book. This book is a must have for people anxious to take their own adventures, people who have any interest in Russia and Lake Baikal and for people who want to have adventures while they are safe and secure at home.

This is the third in the series of adventure tales centering on Anton Rider, a gypsy-raised Brit who makes a living taking sports on safari. He has two upright sons and a separated wife, Gwenn, who has a terminal addiction to lovers who are losers. His friends include a likeable, devious and over-sexed dwarf, a German soldier with one foot, and an ancient Englishman. All these exotic characters are found in exotic locales along the Nile in 1939-1942 as Rommel advances toward Egypt and the British fight desperately to halt him. This, of course, involves Anton, who always finds trouble, and his military-age son Wellington. Gwenn is keeping company with a detestable Frenchman; the dwarf is calculating how he can get even richer with the war The greatest part of the book, especially toward the end, is devoted to war in the desert. The descriptions of the war are a little confusing. More explanation as to why, for example, the Foreign Legion is clinging so desperately to a particular patch of sand would be useful. Courage abounds in this novel; fear is not so evident -- and more would be welcome in a dramatic sense. Likewise, the hardships of heat and thirst in the desert don't seem to be exploited as effectively as they could be. But this is a good adventure tale, better written than most, and I look forward to the next book in the series.

Liked this even better than WRH. Just great adventure writing, set in North Africa. One of the best novels I've ever read. Combines action with romantic setting and atomosphere. Extremely well crafted and written.

Bartle Bull is a great storyteller. The characters we first met in The White Rhino Hotel and further enjoyed in A Cafe on the Nile are back. The setting is now Cairo and Northern Africa as the Nazi juggernaut (in the person of the surprisingly admirable Rommel and his Afrika Corps) prepares to capture Cairo, to thereby control the Middle Eastern oilfields, and to gain an unsurmountable advantage in winning the war. Anton Rider, now older and more battered; Gwen, his estranged wife now in a liaison with another despicable cad; Wellington, their older son, discovering love and heroism for the first time; and, always, the enigmatic Goan dwarf, Olivio Alavedo are all back to further work out their lives in this grand historic context. As always, the reader cares about the characters, is caught up in the fast-paced plot and is swept up in a powerful narrative. If you like adventure and care about good writing, read this series!

The end of WW I brought with it the dawning of a new colonial era in many parts of Africa, as European nations converted former soldiers into settlers in various distant colonies, literally turning swords into ploughshares. This first novel uses the "opening up" of Kenya from 1918-21 as the vivid backdrop for an old-fashioned, page-turning adventure featuring a colorful, multinational cast. The first quarter of the book establishes the background of all the main characters and their motives for heading to Kenya, where their lives and ambitions will intersect at the frontier hotel of the title. Among the people we meet are: Anton Rider, an English half-gypsy who has been an outsider everywhere and seeks adventure; Gwenn a beautiful Welsh ambulance driver who's heading to meet her maimed husband and start a new life; Penfold, an increasingly destitute English lord who's hotel is the locus of the story; Olivio, a proud Goan dwarf who is major domo at the hotel and spies on all intrigues in the area; Fonseca, a brutal and ruthless Portuguese nobleman who's looking to grab land; Annunciata, his sexpot sister; Ernst von Decken, a former German officer; Rack Slider, American safari leader; and various other exotic prostitutes, evil Irishmen, and noble natives (the heroic sidekick Karioki and his nubile sister being the two most prominent).

These folks are all painted with rather broad strokes, as is the norm in historical adventures such as this, however they are so exotic and fun, one generally doesn't mind. There actually, a few transformations that are quite nice, notably the dwarf's realization that friends can exist. Still, it seems a pity that the natives (aside from Olivio's concubine) all come across as part of the landscape, like the lions, elephants, and other flora and fauna so lovingly detailed. The relationship of Anton and Karioki, has a decidedly Lone Ranger and Tontoish feel to it. With Anton as the hero, the reader is propelled through a number of set-piece hunting scenes, a running plot of intrigue and colonial corruption, and vivid portrayals of the harshness of the land toward unprepared newcomers. It's quite fun-if one is willing to take it as an boisterous old-fashioned "boy's own" adventure, with some rather lurid sex, and a few shocking scenes of tragedy and violence. Indeed, at times the book can be quite jarring, as a major character is killed, or in one particularly nasty rape scene. It's as if the author was trying to write an old-fashioned yarn with a heavy dose of reality added. While I quite liked this approach, others may find it upsetting, and it probably isn't appropriate for those under 18.

The character development is great. the setting is well described. A tad heavy on deviant sexual practices of one character. The suicide of of character is convienient but well thought through. Africa of 80-90 years ago.

Super mix of action and adventure in Africa. Bull can write like the wind. Really flows well from action to dialogue. I like all his stuff. Check out Devil's Oasis!

A beautiful cover led me initially to this book as the Sphinx glowed from the clouds amidst palms and distant mountains. The exotic beckoned as I iimagined what interesting pleasures might issue forth from a "cafe on the Nile." I was not disappointed!. A cast of fascinating characters led me into the labyrinths of intrigue, love, and war, not to mention the treachery and calculating energy that existed in Cairo in the early days of WWII. A brilliant and wealthy dwarf, a German soldier of fortune, an English gypsy safari leader and his medical student wife, an impoverished English Lord, and energetic twin sisters from Kentucky make up the main cast of characters, but there are numerous enduring indigenous characters that round out the multi-layered ethnic mixture of Egypt and Africa. This is a novel of intrugue, of close ties of friendship and of betrayal. It focuses on the Italian campaign in Africa where the Italians violated all rules of civilized warfare when they dropped poison gas on thousands of Abyssinian warriors and bombed Red Cross hospital tents. The ensuing torture and vengeance that traveled with their forces illustrates the horror of war and what it can do do one's humanity. Another element of this novel that distinguishes it from the usual historical novel is its focus on the pleasures offered in that part of the world that might be considered decadent in other cultures but that exists hand in hand with the austerity of Islam and the hypocrisy of Chrisianity. Sexual favors and delights are there for the enjoyig, given freely as gifts, as bribes, and as favors. Here the exotic manifests itself in an enchanting and throbbing rhythm that whets the appetite without being vulgar. In addition, the actual love affairs and intimate relations thrill without repulsing. All in all, this is a novel full of energy and excitement. History is there as well as adventure, intrigue and international affairs. Descriptions of the African bush are as beautiful and poetic as the animal and plant life that charm and enchant those on safari. To read Cafe on the Nile is to enter a world of fascinating intrigue and drama that dashes from start to finish, leaving the reader breathless and wishing for more.

I found this vivid African thriller to be a terrific combination of history, adventure and bittersweet romance. With Mussolini's Italian arrmy invading Ethiopia while the white hunter hero is on safari with his wild American clients (a pair of beautiful and spoiled twins from Kentucky), and with other exotic characters intriguing and romancing in 1935 Cairo, it's a rather old-fashioned and very well-written non-stop adventure. The atmosphere is compelling, and I felt I was in Africa. I recommend it to readers who like exciting historical novels and don't mind a few sexy scenes.

They don't write 'em like this anymore. Or at least they don't write and publish enough of them. Here is a tale of high adventure set in the wilds of Africa (from the rough and tumble city of Cairo, Egypt to the highlands of Ethiopia) on the eve of World War II. Bull writes vividly about a fascinating cast of characters caught up in events which are both world shaking and personally significant to each of them. World War I is only just behind these people and World War II is already looming on the horizon. Fascist Italy has pretensions to empire in Africa and poison gas is to be the key to it. All the while, the Goan dwarf, Olivio Fonseca Alavedo, is poised to grow rich with his schemes to corner the cotton market while his friends are struggling with the Depression-induced poverty of the thirties.

Into this shaken time come twin sisters from America, paying for a safari to be conducted by Olivio's old friend, the hunter Anton Rider out of Kenya, while Anton's lovely wife Gwenn, who has left him to do something more significant with her life, and for her two sons, lives nearby, the mistress of a clever Italian air force officer whose attentions enable her to pursue her medical studies at the University of Cairo. An elder, down-at-the-heels English gentleman rounds out Olivio's little circle of close friends while the rough-edged German adventurer, Ernst von Decker, shows up to draw Rider into his own schemes.

Although the players are mostly of the stock sort, they are engagingly drawn. I loved how Bull portrays the "white hunter", Rider, as a veritable fish out of water in the mean streets of Cairo, stumbling awkwardly about and giving his prospective clients second thoughts about him, yet a man who is masterfully competent in his own milieu in the bush. And the Goan dwarf, Olivio, is an especially intriguing (and oddly touching) personality in his machinations to outlast and defeat his scheming enemies in the Cairene bureaucracy while grappling with personal disabilities which would defeat lesser souls.

And yet, there was something pro-forma about it all. One of the inside blurbs called this book "a cup of CASABLANCA, a dollop of Isak Dinesen, a pinch of INDIANA JONES and a touch of TENDER IS THE NIGHT." I think that's about right and that it makes for a very heady brew if you like this sort of thing. As it happens, I do. There were, however, a few problems since the tale did seem somewhat drawn out and not nearly as compelling in the middle as at the end. And I was made a bit uncomfortable by the constant shifts between locales and story lines as the action was continuously deferred in one place to look in on alternating players elsewhere as the tale progressed.

My own preference is for a story which pretty much carries you right through the main line of action. But the varying streams were each interesting in their own way and, while slowing up the read, did not finally halt it. I found myself more and more anxious to see how the characters would work themselves out of their various predicaments (though I never doubted for a moment that they would). Although they were not the deepest of personalities and were plainly stereotypes, they were nicely drawn for the most part (though I had some problem with the lack of presence of Olivio's Kikuyu wife, Kina).

There is a bit of graphic sexuality and violence here but nothing that seemed out of the way for this sort of book and the events it portrayed. However, I thought Mr. Bull's credibility and authorial authority somewhat compromised in the end when he consistently referred to crocodiles as amphibians rather than the reptiles they are. At first I thought it an editorial slip but he did it more than once which I found jarring (though not debilitating to the tale which did seem to reflect a real feel for the terrain). I guess Mr. Bull is just not strong in the sciences . . . or had a momentary lapse. Yet, with all these caveats I have to pound the table for this book because most of the time I wanted to keep going back despite all and, in the end, I couldn't stop until I'd finished it. And when I had, it felt as though I'd been there. -- SWM