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A Splendid Savage: The Restless Life of Frederick Russell Burnham Audiobook
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Publisher Description
Frederick Russell Burnham’s amazing story resembles a newsreel fused with a Saturday matinee thriller.
One of the few people who could turn his garrulous friend Theodore Roosevelt into a listener, Burnham was once world-famous as “the American scout.” His expertise in woodcraft, learned from frontiersmen and Indians, helped inspire another friend, Robert Baden-Powell, to found the Boy Scouts. His adventures encompassed Apache wars and range feuds, booms and busts in mining camps around the globe, explorations in remote regions of Africa, and death-defying military feats that brought him renown and high honors. His skills led to his unusual appointment, as an American, to be chief of scouts for the British during the Boer War, where his daring exploits earned him the Distinguished Service Order from King Edward VII.
After a lifetime pursuing golden prospects from the deserts of Mexico and Africa to the tundra of the Klondike, Burnham found wealth, in his sixties, near his childhood home in southern California. Other men of his era had a few such adventures, but Burnham had them all. His friend H. Rider Haggard, author of many bestselling exotic tales, remarked, “In real life he is more interesting than any of my heroes.”
Among other well-known individuals who figure in Burnham’s story are Cecil Rhodes and William Howard Taft, as well as some of the wealthiest men of the day, including John Hays Hammond, E. H. Harriman, Harry Payne Whitney, and the Guggenheim brothers.
Failure and tragedy streaked his life as well, but he was endlessly willing to set off into the unknown, where the future felt up for grabs and values worth dying for were at stake. Steve Kemper brings a quintessential American story to vivid life in this gripping biography.
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“Narrator Peter Berkrot’s voice is earthy, raw, and authoritative. It’s the perfect match for the story of Frederick Russell Burnham…Listeners of this wide-ranging biography will find Berkrot’s performance to be grounding, even when the events being recounted seem far-fetched.”
— AudioFile
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“Rich, detailed, and pitch-perfect.”
— Wall Street Journal -
“A brilliant biography…The arc of his life, which reads like a Jack London adventure, stretched well beyond the borders of the American West in time and scope.”
— True West magazine -
“[A] life was so full of derring-do and fearless exploits that, lacking historical record, one would assume him to be myth.”
— Outside magazine -
“A splendid book about an amazing life.”
— History Book Club -
“Thrilling adventures presented with the flair they deserve.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) -
“Monumental…every chapter of which could inspire a thrilling novel on its own.”
— Historical Novel Society -
“Chockfull of adventures that feel ripped from dime-store novels.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“A rollicking, gripping portrait.”
— Library Journal
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About Steve Kemper
Steve Kemper is a journalist and the author of several books. He has written for Smithsonian, National Geographic, National Geographic Adventure, National Geographic Traveler, Outside, Wall Street Journal, Yankee, National Wildlife, The Ecologist, Plenty, BBC Wildlife, and many other magazines and newspapers..
About Peter Berkrot
Peter Berkrot, winner of Audie and Earphones Awards for narration, is a stage, screen, and television actor and acting coach. He has narrated over 450 works that span a range of genres, including fiction, nonfiction, thriller, and children’s titles. His audiobook credits include works of Alan Glynn, Eric Van Lustbader, Nora Roberts and Dean Koontz. In film and television, he appeared in Caddyshack, America’s Most Wanted, and Unsolved Mysteries. He performs in regional and New York theaters and directs the New Voices acting school.