Horn and Tusk

A global history of the African wildlife trade and the making of a multibillion-dollar illicit economy

In the early 2000s, something strange stirred in the global marketplace. Elephant tusks, rhinoceros horns, and other African wildlife products began fetching unheard-of prices, and a multibillion-dollar international black market began emptying whole wildernesses.

As journalist Charles Homans investigated this rekindled desire for some of the world’s most ancient prizes, he uncovered a much deeper story, one spanning centuries and countries across the planet. Horn and Tusk is the definitive account of how a global market dating to antiquity became a vast underground economy in the twenty-first century, and how it has evaded the most dogged efforts to control it. It is the engrossing story of how far people are willing to go in pursuit of the planet’s last great beasts, and how far others are willing to go to stop them.

A triumph of investigative storytelling, full of human drama and richly told, Horn and Tusk chronicles a centuries-long battle over the value and meaning of the natural world—a battle that continues today, leaving animal and human casualties in its wake.