Rating: 
Summary: Ruark's best novel
Review: The late Robert Ruark was mainly noted for his magazine articles and his writing on big game hunting, primarily in Africa, but was more than capable of turning out a "keep you up late reading it" novel such as this one. "Something of Value" takes place in Kenya in the days of the Mau-Mau rebellion and shows that tragic conflict from both sides. Ruark shows the mistakes the British had made in "civilzing" the largest native tribe in Kenya, the Kikyuyu, taking their customs away and replacing them with nothing they could relate to and how this lack of "something of value" allowed the Mau-Mau to grow until it consisted of 90% of the male Kikyuyu population. It is, in many ways, an old, old story of culture clash, but seldom is the story told so powerfully. This is Ruark the novelist at his best and should not be missed by anyone interested in Africa or for that matter, anyone interested in great writing.....
Rating:
Summary: A Superb Book
Review: This book definitely lives up to its billing. It tells the harrowing story of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya during the 1950s. The writing is superb. A very difficult book to put down.
Rating:
Summary: Best Book I've ever read.
Review: This book has something "magical" about it. It's an obscure book today, but it holds a special place in my heart and mind, and has so for nearly my entire life. I first read it in the late 1950's, when I was a young teenager. The adventure and graphic violence was probably shocking to me then, but the book inspired me to make reading about Africa and it's history a serious hobby back then. I read the book the second time when I was an adult in my 30's. I found a tattered paperback edition in a used book store. It was just as exciting to me then as it was many years before. By then I had two daughters, and I told them of my "favorite book." Last Christmas, my youngest daughter, who was then 19, gave me an ORIGINAL edition, which still had the paper jacket. When I opened the gift, tears welled up in my eyes. WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS BOOK?
Ruark's style was wonderful, and his way of developing a story was terrific. Read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Something of Value -- a Valuable Lesson
Review: This book personalizes and, thereby, illuminates a rather ugly chapter in human history, one that should have and could have been avoided. The strengths and the faults of both European and African/Kikuyu culture are carefully delineated, so that the reader can see the causes and, perhaps, inevitability of the Mau Mau uprising quite clearly. While the Kikuyu were brutal by European standards, it seems most of the reviews I read here miss the point. Yes, the white settlers in Kenya came in and imposed their values on the indigenous blacks, treating them as inferiors, almost as pets. Yes, the white settles were kind, improving health care, imposing peace, and so on -- albeit with a great degree of condescension Yes, by present-day, "civilized" standards, the reaction of the Kikuyu in the excesses of the Mau Mau were unconscionable. But the author prefaces the book with a Basuto proverb: "If a man does away with his traditional way of living and throws away his good customs, he had better first make certain that he has something of value to replace them." The Kikuyu had their traditions stripped away, but the Europeans gave them nothing with which to replace them. The Kikuyu then created something horrible to fill the void. Tragic.
Rating: 
Summary: Mau Mau and America's fantasies
Review: This book was made into a movie and had Sir Winston Churchill do the opening narration. The Kenya of the Birtish Empire was one of aristocrats gone farming. Blacks of eastern Africa -- especially the Kikuyu -- wanted to take power from the whites and subjugate the remaining tribes -- the Masai for example. While the term "Mau Mau" has no basis in any African language it quickly took on the nightmarish -- goulish meaning of disembowelment, slaughter, terror. There is abundant evidence that the Mau Mau took the rituals of the Christian church and turned them into ceremonies encouraging brotherhood in the Mau Mau society. These rituals included drinking human blood laced with semen and urine followed by a meal of human infants exhumed or murdered for the occasion. It should be interesting to note that the body of Dr. Gray Arundel Leakey -- patriarch of the archaeological family of Olduvai Gorge fame -- was made part of one of these ceremonies. While it is popular to blame the white man for every fault in the human condition it will take a real stretch to blame pedantic English Aristocrats for native chapels decorated with human intestines, gouged eyes and exhumed bodies.
Rating:
Summary: Bloody Africa: No fairy tales in this novel.
Review: This book was so accurate and so brutally honest that Ruark was banned from Kenya by the British and the Native Kenyan goverments.
For those of you who don't know; Roberk Ruark was THE defining voice in America for Africa in the 1950's. His columns appeared in Field & Stream magazine when EVERYONE read Field & Stream. He was a celebrity with apartments in New York and a villa in Spain. These were the days when rich men ate red meat, went to Africa to "shoot lions" and were disappointed if it didn't charge!
If you love African game stories and you belive in the superiority of Western civilization over shamanist tribalism then this book is for you.
When the English colonized what is now Kenya it was a true clash of moderns with the Stone Age. These men (and women) had as rough a time as Americans did taming the West. Really more so because the Africans were more numerous than the American Indians and only one or two of our animals would eat you. After years of carving farms out of the harsh African veldt with the permission and support of the Britsh goverment the farmers suddenly found themselves put "out into the cold" by their goverment. The Socialists in England suddenly decided by vote to modernize the Native African from the Stone Age to the Industrial age overnight. From shamans and chiefs to democracy; brought in by "the Winds of Change". If you ever suspected that you have been lied to about Africa by the Desmond Tutu's and Nelson Mandela's of the world, if you want to know what is going to happen in South Africa in the next 10 years, if you need any more convincing that America's Africa policy caters more to Jesse Jackson than the true "status quo" of Africa, then this is the book for you.
Ruark does a brillant job of juxapositioning the issues of tribesman and colonist alike.
The politics and violence of MauMau are amazingly similar to the African National Congress.
In Ruark's Africa everyone is right; and wrong. All the native born Africans in his book, Black and White alike, believe to the bottom of their soul in what they are doing. I don't think Kipling himself could have captured the essense of Africa any better!
Rating:
Summary: A Superb Book
Review: This classic is worth the read. It's the best historical fiction I have read in a long time.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Read
Review: This classic is worth the read. It's the best historical fiction I have read in a long time.
Rating:
Summary: Epic story of life during Mau Mau
Review: When it was first published in 1955 "Something of Value" was a novel right out of the headlines, set in contemporary Kenya during the time of the Mau Mau rebellion which were the last years of British colonial rule. Now it has aged into an historical novel. The largest part of the novel concerns two men, once childhood friends: Kimani, a Kikuyu and Peter, a British settler. They grow up together on a farm in the "white highlands", Kimani is the son of a farmhand, Peter the son of the owner. They imagine themselves working together as adults, as gunbearer and white hunter, guiding tourists on hunting safaris. Instead they become adversaries during the Mau Mau. Ruark tells a good story though the book is a bit long in places. Throughout the novel, the depictions of both African and British characters is remarkably balanced and fair. Ruark is one of the few white writers of the 1950s to provide a sympathetic and (apparently) informed view of African (particularly Kikuyu) culture. It is the clash of Kikuyu and British cultures, as British law is applied to traditional Kikuyu custom that is the impetus for Kimani to join the rebellion. It would be interesting to know if all of the novel's details of the Mau Mau oaths are accurate. The female characters are a bit one dimensional; this is a book about hunting, warfare, and the world as seen by men. Overall, a very good book, especially for anyone interested in Kenya and the end of colonialism. ("Something of Value" was made into a movie starring Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier.)
Rating:
Summary: Epic story of life during Mau Mau
Review: When it was first published in 1955 "Something of Value" was a novel right out of the headlines, set in contemporary Kenya during the time of the Mau Mau rebellion which were the last years of British colonial rule. Now it has aged into an historical novel. The largest part of the novel concerns two men, once childhood friends: Kimani, a Kikuyu and Peter, a British settler. They grow up together on a farm in the "white highlands", Kimani is the son of a farmhand, Peter the son of the owner. They imagine themselves working together as adults, as gunbearer and white hunter, guiding tourists on hunting safaris. Instead they become adversaries during the Mau Mau. Ruark tells a good story though the book is a bit long in places. Throughout the novel, the depictions of both African and British characters is remarkably balanced and fair. Ruark is one of the few white writers of the 1950s to provide a sympathetic and (apparently) informed view of African (particularly Kikuyu) culture. It is the clash of Kikuyu and British cultures, as British law is applied to traditional Kikuyu custom that is the impetus for Kimani to join the rebellion. It would be interesting to know if all of the novel's details of the Mau Mau oaths are accurate. The female characters are a bit one dimensional; this is a book about hunting, warfare, and the world as seen by men. Overall, a very good book, especially for anyone interested in Kenya and the end of colonialism. ("Something of Value" was made into a movie starring Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier.)
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