Jay Yelas: A Champion's Journey of Faith, Family, and Fishing Book

The first million pages or so are a fawning catalog of an endless parade of white African hunters, most of whom end up heroically torn to ribbons or gored by buffalo or rhino. He has that misplaced nostalgia for the time, which I find silly but (barely) forgivable.

Then Herne gets to the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950's, and his earnest clumsiness turns into completely awful ham-handedness. Standard white I'm-not-racist guy perspective on African events: everything was fine in Africa, there is no justification for the uprising, and every white victim was a kind soul who had dedicated his or her life to the best interests of black Africans. The white murders are described in gruesome detail -- lying in wait in the kitchen, bursting into the bedroom, machetes to arms and legs -- while the subsequent retaliations are described offhandedly, without even granting the Mau Mau the dignity or respect that he gives to man-eating lions.

The second half doesn't quite maintain that level of offensiveness, but still manages to offend. To summarize: all conservation problems are caused by black poachers, war, and the uneducated black leaders who kick out the white hunter/farmer/conservationists. The white hunting industry preserves wildlife, but the black Africans destroy it. This line of thinking goes back to (at least) the 19th century, when European hunters would literally describe killing hundreds of animals in a single day, then in the next sentence complain that big mammals were in danger of extinction, because greedy traders were selling firearms to the natives.

Have to dispose of this POS properly so no one sees it on my bookshelf, least of all me.