Books with author JOY ADAMSON

There have been many tales of animals' return to the wild, but since its first publication in 1960, when the New York Times hailed it as a "fascinating and remarkable book," one stands alone as the most original and perhaps best-loved animal story. Born Free is a classic which traces the extraordinary development of the lion cub Elsa in transition between two radically different worlds. As it captures the spirit of humankind's ability to cross the barriers to the natural world, Joy Adamson's unique tale remains -- in these destructive times, with one ecological disaster following upon another -- an idyll to return to again and again. Illustrated with all the highly evocative photographs that initially stirred the world, and updated with a new introduction by Dr. George B. Schaller, Director of Wildlife Conservation for the New York Zoological Society and long-time acquaintance of the Adamsons, this large-sized paperback edition again renews one of the most remarkable associations between man and wild beast ever told.

Out of Africa comes the story of Elsa, the lioness, raised with loving care and then - in an incredible turnabout - trained by her human friends to hunt, stalk and kill so she could return to jungle freedom. One of the most winning and memorable stories ever. The history of the lioness Elsa, reared from earliest infancy to three years old and finally returned to a wild life, forms a unique and illuminating study in animal psychology-a subject to which the last half-century has seen a wholly new approach. Partly, no doubt, in revolt against the tendency of nineteenth-century writers to attribute to animals anthropomorphic qualities of intellignece, sentiment, and emotion, the twentieth century has seen the development of a school of thought according to which the springs of animal behavior are to be sought in terms of "conditioned reflexes," "release mechanisms," and the rest of a wholly new vocabulary which is regarded as the gateway to a clearer understanding of animal psychology. To another way of thinking, which cannot reconcile the mechanical conception with the diverse character, intelligence, and capabilities exhibited by different individuals of the same species, that gateway to understanding seems as far removed from truth as the anthropomorphism of a previous generation, and more apt to raise a further barrier to a sympathetic understanding of animal behavior than a revelation of it. To wahtever way of thinking the reader of Elsa's history may lean, it provides a record of absorbing interest depicting the gradual development of a controlled character which few would have credited as possible in the case of an animal potentially dangerous as any in the world. That such a creature when in a high excited stae, with her blood up after a long struggle with a bull buffalo, and while still on top of it, should have permitted a man to walk up to her and cut the dying beast's throata to satisfy his religious scruples, and then lend her assistance in pulling the carcass out of a river, is an astonishing tribute no less to her intelligence than to her self-control. If the most fanciful author of animal stories of the nineteenth century had draw the imaginary character of a lioness acting in that manner it would assuredly have been ridiculed as altogether "out of character" and too improbablle to carry conviction-and yet Elsa's record shows that it is no more than sober fact. If in her development Elsa has made her own commentary both on the "antropomorphism" of the nineteenth century and on the "science" of the twentieth she has not lived in vain.