Mr. Hornaday's War

February 20, 2012
This brief, entertaining biography by Bechtel (a founding editor of Men’s Health and author of Tornado Hunter) traces William Hornaday’s (1854–1937) journey from big game hunter (he killed 43 orangutans in Borneo as a young man) to defender of wildlife, and his emergence as one of the 19th century’s most famous conservationists. Founder and first director of Washington, D.C.’s National Zoo, and first director of the Bronx Zoo, Hornaday’s life was riddled with paradox. For example, he is sometimes credited with singlehandedly saving the American buffalo. Once the most ubiquitous creature on the continent, the bison had been hunted to the brink of extinction, and in 1886, Hornaday had reason to believe that the “buffalo-hide hunters of the United States had practically finished their work.” In response, he organized his own buffalo hunt, with the goal of collecting specimens to taxidermy and display in the Smithsonian, “allowing people to see, up close, what he was asking them to save.” Though clearly fond of his subject, Bechtel does not gloss over Hornaday’s faults—such as the troubling incident in which Hornaday displayed a Congolese pygmy at the Bronx Zoo—and the resulting book offers a lively treatment of a singular life. Agent: Don Fehr, Trident Media Group.

April 1, 2012
A biography of a man whose life was intertwined with the conservation movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Starting with William Temple Hornaday's (1854-1937) discovery that the American buffalo were being hunted to extinction, Men's Health founding editor Bechtel (Roar of the Heavens, 2007, etc.) tells the story of Hornaday's life and how he became the man who would bring the buffalo back to the prairies. Raised on a farm in Indiana, Hornaday was exposed to taxidermy early in his life and pursued a career in that field through his teen and college years. After landing a job in a museum, he decided, at age 19, to mount his first expedition to obtain exotic animals. Trips to Florida, South America, India and Borneo made Hornaday a minor celebrity adventurer and helped him land a job at the Smithsonian and eventually as the director of the Bronx Zoo. Bechtel focuses mainly on Hornaday's conservation work, using his childhood, taxidermy work and expeditions to show how he became interested in the movement. Many of the passages about conservation are repetitive, and Bechtel's tone varies as he clearly struggles with his admiration for Hornaday's efforts to preserve wildlife and his misgivings about the hunting of animals for display. While there is a short section on his work to save seals and a larger section on birds, the focus frequently returns to Hornaday's work with the buffalo. Bechtel's passion for his subject makes the book an interesting and enjoyable though occasionally preachy read. The book will appeal to readers curious about the beginning of wildlife conservation in America, but it won't provide much new information to serious Hornaday fans who have already read his own accounts of these exploits.

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