This is a much too abbreviated list of the hunters and trackers of East Africa and their wonderful lives. If you are expecting the adventure packed prose of Capstick, look to Capstick not here.
I did not find the book difficult to read or understand, but it was more a historical text instead of an interesting adventure.
This book would serve as a good primer for reading other works like Roosevelt's African Game Trails so the reader would understand who the characters were in that book better.

Considering the absolute wealth of characters and high drama Mr. Herne had to work with this book comes off rather dry and shallow.
For living the most exciting of lives, Mr. Herne does not seem all that excited about any of the people in it. So regrettably 3 stars.

First the negatives: basically, the list of white hunters comes at the reader in a blur of names and brief incidents, so that sometimes the reading takes on a repetitious feel. I found myself a bit overwhelmed at the onslaught of names and personalities, sometimes given no more than a few paragraphs of space. The information is arranged chronologically, beginning with the earliest white hunters like Cornwallis Harris and R.J. Cunninghame, and proceeds at a blistering pace through the 1970's, when Kenya outlawed all safari hunting. Brian Herne, the author, is a good writer, without being particularly inspired. If you are looking for the Peter Capstick (Death in the Long Grass) style of safari writing, you will not find it here. Herne is not the talented storyteller that Capstick is; yet Mr. Herne does have his own particular strengths. His style is very journalistic, in that he relays facts in blunt, swift manner. Take for Instance his concise description of White Hunter, Eric Rundgren's encounter with a charging buffalo: "During one pursuit a wounded buffalo charged, slammed hard in Rundgren, and tossed him over a riverbank. He landed in the gravel stream, but held on to his .450 double rifle. Above him on the bank was the buffalo looking down at him. Lying in the shallow river Rundgren shot the buff in the throat and it collapsed." End of incident. In a Capstick book, this mad charge by a buffalo would have taken a page or two, and by the end of it the reader himself would have felt covered in fear and sweat. Yet, despite the above, I heartily recommend this book for its many strengths: for one, Brian Herne has incredible credentials as a hunter, and one senses in his writing that they are being given the true deal. Maybe not as colorfully expressed as a Capstick, but frankly, more real. Also, there are many nuggets of breathtaking adventure that come jumping at the reader right through the factual prose of Mr. Herne. Nearly every hunter of any note is here, and the reader is given potraits of all the greats: Alan Black, Karamoja Bell, Bror Blizen, Charles Cottar, Bill Judd, and many, many others. Herne certainly can't be faulted for his completeness of the topic. What becomes clear when reading Mr. Herne's book is two facts. First, that big game hunting is an incredibly dangerous profession. It seems that nearly all the hunters were at some point gored or horribly mauled by big game, or suffered malaria, black-water fever, or one of the many diseases that float in the air in Africa. A fair number where killed outright, and these stories make the most gripping in the book, Two, conservation of big game was also an important role of these big game hunters. It was not the white hunters that decimated the rhino and elephant, but rather the various corrupt African governments themselves that allowed, and benefited greatly, from poaching. Herne makes a case for this in statistics that are irrefutable. By eliminating the safari hunters, the only group of individuals that had both the means and incentive to protect the region's wildlife for both personal and financial reasons, the corrupt government officials and poachers were free to roam, now hunting with AK-47 assault rifles and poisons. International prices for rhino horn and Ivory jumped up, as did the death toll for elephant and rhino. In short, this book is a great resource for the true story of white hunters. It includes a fabulous bibliography as well, for further reading.

I have always enjoyed reading about African hunting and looked forward to Hernes book. While it did deliver the information promised, I believe the book could have used a bit better editing. This is for a couple of different reasons. For one, Mr. Here identifies so many different hunters that it gets somewhat confusing keeping track of who did what. As noted by above reviewers, there are plenty of hair-raising anecdotes, and it is a quite thrilling book, but Mr. Herne just briefly touches on a few events of the lives of literally thousands of people that spent time hunting of working for hunters in Africa. It is sort of like a buffet where there are a multitude of courses, but you can only take a bit or two of each course. Secondly, Mr. Herne sometimes changes subjects, persons or topics, without notice. One paragraph you are reading about a particular hunter and another paragraph you read about some political aspects of hunting whose connection to the previous hunter is not always obvious. I think that a good editor, making a smoother transition between subjects, and perhaps eliminating a discussion of some briefly mentioned persons in order to focus a bit more on others who were more influential, could have made this good book even better. Those two criticisms aside, I really enjoyed the book. mr. Herne's recounting of life in pre-WWI east Africa was incredibly intriguing. His analysis of hunting's conservation effects make a powerful argument for the use of hunting as a game-management technique. All in all, I would heartily recommend this book to anyone desiring to learn about either the history of African history or arguments for hunting.