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In 1959, though just twenty-six years old and a graduate student, George B. Schaller shrugged off warnings of mortal danger and set off for the Belgian Congo to do what no other scientist had dared: study mountain gorillas, the real King Kong, by living alongside them.
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Boldly refusing arms and retinue, Schaller and his wife, Kay, established a home in the jungle and came to share the apes’ rhythms and rules. After more than two years of immersive research—a groundbreaking methodology he would spend his life honing—Schaller transformed how the world viewed gorillas; they were not murderous brutes but tender creatures, and more like humans than any twentieth-century scientist had recognized. His mission to revolutionize our perceptions of wild animals would propel him across four continents and inspire generations of scientists.
In Homesick for a World Unknown, Miriam Horn draws on thousands of pages from Schaller’s journals and letters, globe-spanning interviews, and two journeys into the field with the legendary scientist himself to trace his emergence as the founding father of modern wildlife conservation.
Miriam Horn began her career with the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado, managing timber and restoring habitat for elk and bighorn sheep, and spent fourteen years at Environmental Defense Fund, working on energy and community-based conservation. She is the author of Rebels in White Gloves: Coming of Age with Hillary’s Class—Wellesley ‘69 (Random House 1999); the New York Times bestselling Earth: The Sequel, The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming (coauthored with EDF president Fred Krupp, Norton, 2008); and Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman; Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland (Norton, 2016) which Kirkus named a Best Book of the Year. The Discovery Channel documentary based on the book, narrated by Tom Brokaw and produced by Horn, premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
Jennifer Homans is the Dance Critic for The New Yorker, and the author of Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century (2022). Homans was a professional dancer before earning a PhD in Modern European History at New York University, where she now holds the Van Cleef and Arpels Chair in the History of Dance. She is the Founder and Director of NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts.
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