About the Author
Mark C. Ross spent his summers in the mountains of Montana, Wyoming, and Washington, working as forest fire fighter before moving to Africa and becoming a full time guide based in Kenya. He has been working as a guide and pilot for over twenty years. He spends part of each year in Colorado. His original essay, "The Last Safari", first appeared in Talk magazine, and was included in The Best American Travel Writing, 2000, edited by Bill Bryson.

Book Description (from the publisher)
On March 1, 1999, American safari guide Mark Ross was camped with four clients in Uganda, searching for endangered mountain gorillas. By day's end, two of these clients and six other tourists were dead at the hand of Rwandan rebels slipping across the border from Congo. The tragedy made headlines around the world, and Mark Ross, grieving for his lost clients and friends, realized his life had changed forever. He writes, "The continent has always been the love of my life. Now there is trouble between us."

Dangerous Beauty is the story of that love and that trouble. Ross is one of the most seasoned and skilled safari guides at work in Africa today, and he writes here about his close-hand encounters with danger and natural beauty in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Uganda. He describes his walks in the bush and the way he teaches his clients to read the unearthly silences and stillnesses in the wind that signify trouble. He writes about deadly charges by elephants, encounters with lions, cheetah and Cape buffalo, and the electric excitement of witnessing the mass migrations of wildebeest and zebras. He writes in detail about the terrible events of March, 1999, and their aftermath. Ross also conveys the tranquility of dawn in the wild, and the times when the extraordinary loveliness of the land bear down on the guide and his safari companions. The result is an immensely powerful book: the culmination of a life spent close to the edge, and a tribute to a land and its remarkable, menacing beauty.

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