Other editions of book Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds

There have been many accounts of the return to the wild of tame animals, but since its original publication in 1960, when The New York Times hailed it as a “fascinating and remarkable book,” Born Free has stood alone in its power to move us.Joy Adamson's story of a lion cub in transition between the captivity in which she is raised and the fearsome wild to which she is returned captures the abilities of both humans and animals to cross the seemingly unbridgeable gap between their radically different worlds. Especially now, at a time when the sanctity of the wild and its inhabitants is increasingly threatened by human development and natural disaster, Adamson's remarkable tale is an idyll, and a model, to return to again and again.Illustrated with the same beautiful, evocative photographs that first enchanted the world forty years ago and updated with a new introduction by George Page, former host and executive editor of the PBS series Nature and author of Inside the Animal Mind, this anniversary edition introduces to a new generation one of the most heartwarming associations between man and animal.

Dust jacket notes: "Out of Africa comes the story of the most remarkable association between man and wild beast ever told. Joy Adamson is the wife of a game warden in Kenya. One day her husband was called out to deal with a man-eating lion. While stalking the lion he was suddenly charged by a lioness whom he had to shoot in self-defense. In the crevice of some nearby rocks he found three cubs. They decided to rear one of them as a pet. This is by no means the first case of a lion cub being reared by Europeans. But in all previous instances, the foster parents eventually had to face up to the problem of how to dispose of a fully grown lion; they had to choose between the two alternatives, consigning it to a zoo or giving it a freedom which it was unfit to enjoy or even survive. The Adamson's foresaw this dilemma and worked out a solution. They deliberately set about training their lioness, Elsa, to kill and fend for herself. They succeeded in turning her back into the fierce wild animal nature had intended her to be. At the same time they preserved undiminished the bond of confidence and affection which they had established with her as a pet. Today the lioness lives the proud life of the king of beasts. She has found a mate and had produced a litter of cubs. Her foster parents visit her at regular intervals. On arrival in her area they fire a few shots in the air and wait for her to come bounding out of the bush. She is always touchingly glad to see them and gives them a boisterous welcome. Hers is a unique story-of a lion who has bridged the gulf between two worlds, that of the jungle and of man, to enjoy the freedom of both. Never before has the life history of a wild animal been so intimately recorded over such a long period or been documented at every stage by such a remarkable collection of photographs, numbering in the thousands, of which over one hundred are reproduced in the book."

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.