An altogether admirable person, [Joy Adamson] has lived a rambunctious, large-scale, productive life, her own best example of one of the very few introspections to be found in ["The Searching Spirit"]: "… only one thing is certain—people get out of life exactly what they put into it."

Having put more into it than most, Mrs. Adamson has left a lot of her life out of her book…. [The] best that can be said of Mrs. Adamson's narrative is that she reduces things to their essence. Too little is made of too much. Almost at random throughout the Kenya section, within two or three pages, she may be found dashing up one mountainside and down the next, collecting exotic species and surviving a variety of disasters. Her most personal impressions seldom transcend the level of postcard sensibility, and her experiences as a trained observer of this matchless but swiftly...