Miriam Horn on George Schaller, with Joe Walston

Join Miriam Horn and Joe Walston for a live chat about George Schaller’s amazing wildlife work!

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. 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.

Joe Walston is Executive Vice President for Wildlife Conservation Society Global, which operates in more than sixty countries to protect species and habitats, promote animal and human health, foster forests and counter wildlife trafficking. He also oversees the Science Council which underpinw the organization’s conservation strategies. Joe has worked for WCS for over 20 years, beginning when he helped establish the WCS Cambodia Program. For leading the first nationwide wildlife surveys of Cambodian forests since the Khmer Rouge, he was awarded the country’s highest civilian honor. He went on to lead conservation programs in the Congo Basin and southern Africa before moving to New York to become Director of the Asia Program and then Senior Vice President for WCS Global Field Programs. Joe’s scientific publications have described new species and addressed the global future of conservation. He has a special interest in bats and, in 2012, a new species of tube-nosed bat was named Murina walstonii in recognition of his conservation efforts.