Twentieth-Century Man: The Wild Life of Peter Beard Hardcover – July 4, 2023

Not necessarily a likable person, but someone who made contributions, some good and some not, to art and conservation, so a worthy read. The contributions were only possible in his case because of enormous wealth. Seems unlikely he would have made similar contributions if he had been born poor or even middle class. For me the most instructive part of his story is the context of Eastern Africa wildlife conservation as Kenya gained independence and the ultra wealthy played outsized roles.

Author is more interested in his own opinions & theories than Beard's life. Very disappointing.

I'm not sure why Christopher Wallace wasted his and your time writing this book. The subject is a well-known photographer and for a book about a photographer to have no photos of the photographer's work in the book was puzzling and nonsensical. Beard did mixed media photographs that I dig. In addition, Beard was also involved with quite a number of beautiful women in his lifetime and for the author to have (again) no pictures/photos of Beard with these women was really a waste and shows a real lack of knowledge of what drives people to purchase books. Here was an excellent opportunity to learn/seen more of a very interesting character and it was really wasted with the lack of visual information. Most people do not live the kind of life Peter Beard lived.There's no reason to read this book. The writing is dry and unremarkable. The book doesn't appear to get involved with the meat of the artist's life. Not worth the effort!

This is the second book covering Peter Beard’s (1938-2020) life after his tragic death. I have read Graham Boynton’ WILD last year. As a lifetime admirer of Beard, I couldn’t wait to read the new “Twentieth Century Man: The Wild life of Peter Beard” (Ecco Press, NY) by Christopher Wallace, delivered to me by Amazon this week.It appears that, Unlike Boynton’s book, the Twentieth Century man is written from the point of view of a psycho analyst who assume what’s wrong with Peter Beard. Apart from meeting Beard once to interview him for an article in 2016, the author had not much contacts with Peter’s long time friends, and does not look like he actually traveled outside the US to visit places Beard visited and lived including Kenya. There are no Acknowledgements to thank people who helped the author, and there are no illustrations except one battered b/w photo, while Boynton’s WILD contains eight pages of color plates, a detailed list of acknowledgements, a bibliography siting all works by Peter Beard and chapter notes- all these are absent in Wallace’s book which is printed on low quality stock to save cost, but still charging $32.99 for this light weight cheap looking book. Not Recommended.Until another better written and well written biography of Peter Beard comes out, your best bet is Graham Boynton’s WILD: The Life of Peter Beard- Photographer, Adventurer & Lover (St. Martin’s Press, NY, 2022, 344 pages, color plates, available everywhere from $15 to $35.00