L.S.B. Leakey | Biography & Memoir

White African by L.S.B. Leakey

Name: White African by L.S.B. Leakey
Brand: Fehmerling Books
SKU: 345235665150
Price: 18.00 USD
Availability: InStock

White African by L.S.B. Leakey

$18.00 USD

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Book Specifications

Format: Paperback
Condition: Good
Publisher: Ballantine Books (1973)
Length: 274 pages
Genre: Biography & Memoir
SBN: 345-23566-5-150
OCLC: 860185

Condition Note: A well read copy with clean, crisp, unmarked pages and a tight binding.

Quantity

Ships within 1–2 business days. Carefully packaged for safe delivery.

A Pioneer Paleoanthropologist Recounts His Kikuyu Initiation, Colonial Kenyan Youth, and Early African Expeditions

Before unearthing the hominid fossils that established East Africa as the evolutionary cradle of humankind, Louis S.B. Leakey spent his formative years immersed in colonial British East Africa. Born in 1902 at the Kabete mission station near Nairobi to British missionary parents, Leakey grew up alongside local Kikuyu playmates. Fluent in the Kikuyu language, he learned traditional bushcraft, tracking, and hunting skills, culminating in his formal initiation into the Kikuyu tribe as an accepted member of an indigenous age-grade.

Originally published in 1937, White African documents Leakey's path from boyhood in Kenya to St. John's College, Cambridge, followed by his early archaeological field surveys throughout the Great Rift Valley. Leakey recounts his hands-on stone-tool knapping experiments, hazardous logistical expeditions, and the initial prehistoric site discoveries that prepared him for his career-defining excavations at Olduvai Gorge.

Why You’ll Love This Book

L.S.B. Leakey delivers a firsthand record of early 20th-century African field archaeology, Kikuyu cultural practices, and the foundations of modern human origins research. A vintage autobiography for collectors of natural history, paleoanthropology, and the biographical legacies of Mary Leakey, Richard Leakey, and Donald Johanson.

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New: Direct from the publisher; immaculate, unread condition.
Like New: Pristine condition with minimal to no shelf wear; looks unread.
Very Good: Lightly read with minor shelf wear or light cover creasing. Pages are clean, crisp, and unmarked with a tight binding. (Our baseline standard for pre-loved books.)
Good: A well-loved reading copy with visible shelf wear or page aging, but fully intact and structurally sound.

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