Publisher's Synopsis
Edgar Rice Burroughs is one of the world's most popular authors. With no previous experience as an author, he wrote and sold his first novel-_A Princess of Mars_-in 1912. In the ensuing thirty-eight years until his death in 1950, Burroughs wrote ninety-one books and a host of short stories and articles. Although best known as the creator of the classic Tarzan of the Apes and John Carter of Mars, his restless imagination knew few bounds. Burroughs's prolific pen ranged from the American West to primitive Africa and on to romantic adventure on the moon, the planets, and even beyond the farthest star. No one knows how many copies of ERB books have been published throughout the world. It is conservative to say, however, that with the translations into thirty-two known languages, including Braille, the number must ran into the hundreds of millions. When one considers the additional worldwide following of the Tarzan newspaper feature, radio programs, comic magazines, motion pictures, and television, Burroughs must have been known and loved by literally a thousand million or more.Arizona Territory...the country of red deserts, rocks, high buttes and mountains-a harsh land but still a land, the Apaches had chosen for their own. The land made the men, and the Indiands were trained from infancy to match their strength, their cunning, their hunting ability against the rigors and pitiless cruelty against the wildest country. For generations the Apaches raided into Mexico for horses and woman and cattle, but those creatures that they made their own they always treated with care and respect. And so when they found a squalling, black-haired baby boy in a white man's wagon and their chief Geronimo claimed it for thier own, the baby became an Apache. At first he was only known as Ish-kay-nay-boy. In the Apache tradition he had a private name, which nobody would ever use, but his public name had to be earned. At ten Ish-kay-nay killed his first bear-singlehanded and with only a bow and arrow. So Ish-kay-nay became Shaz-Dijiji-Black Bear. And this was only the beginning of a life filled with the danger and excitement of the hunt, not only for food but against enemies who had become increasingly threatening-and of all these enemies, the most satisfying to hunt were the white men who had now begun to ravage Apache country. To this hunt Shaz-Dijiji dedicated himself.