Miriam Horn: Homesick for a World Unknown — The Life of George Schaller
Miriam Horn presents her biography of George Schaller, the field biologist whose 70-year career studying gorillas, tigers, giant pandas, and snow leopards.
Why we picked this
Schaller has been studying animals in the field since the 1950s, longer than almost any other living scientist — Horn's biography is structured around access to a life that is nearly impossible to comprehend in its geographic and temporal scale.
George B. Schaller is widely considered the world’s greatest living field biologist. Since the late 1950s, he has conducted foundational research on mountain gorillas in the Congo, tigers in India, lions in Tanzania, jaguars in Brazil, giant pandas in China, and snow leopards in the Himalayas — studies that defined what modern wildlife science looks like and established the basis for conservation efforts that continue today. He is in his nineties, and his career spans the transformation of both the natural world and the scientific discipline he helped create.
Miriam Horn spent years with Schaller to write “Homesick for a World Unknown,” and the biography benefits from that proximity. The book is attentive to the scientific method — the patience and precision of long-term field observation — but also to the costs: the physical hardship, the personal sacrifices, the experience of watching ecosystems change dramatically over a lifetime of watching them closely.
This is a ticketed afternoon event at Tattered Cover’s Aspen Grove location in Littleton. For anyone interested in the natural world, conservation biology, or the biography of extreme professional dedication, it is worth planning around.