Welcome
I didn’t set out to write a book.
But then again, I didn’t mean to drop out of university and go off to live in South Africa (on three separate occasions). Yet here we are.
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How the Rhino Lost It’s Horn is my debut book; an irreverent, cynical, (hopefully) entertaining journey of a young adult navigating the modern world, from my time in small-town America through my years in South Africa, and the spaces in between. It’s part travelogue, part social/political commentary, part personal journal.
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If you’ve ever felt like you weren’t cut out for the system you were born into, or at least that the system was definitely not designed with you in mind, you might find something here worth reading.
About Jack
Hi there, I’m Jack.
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I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, AKA "Amish country" (I might look the part, I’m not actually Amish myself). For my BA and MA, I studied political journalism and international relations, which are degrees you get when you're someone who likes writing, but likes to sound interesting and important a little bit more.
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For a long time, I never really gave myself permission to be creative. "Sitting down to write a book" wasn’t the sort of thing that was encouraged, or even really considered, back home. But then the pandemic hit; I had nothing to lose (and nothing else to do), so I decided to finally give it a shot.
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How the Rhino Lost His Horn is the product of that shift in perspective. Increasingly, people don’t feel like they have permission or the bandwidth to be creative, to be vulnerable, to commit to something where the "payoffs" might be intangible—and I believe that we, as a collective, are worse for it. And so the book itself is a message: about the importance of expressing yourself; of trusting your voice—if for nobody else’s sake than your own.​
About the Book
How the Rhino Lost His Horn
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What started as a rough travelogue of my time in South Africa quickly became something more: a meditation on broader issues; politics, culture, and what it means to belong (or not belong) anywhere at all.
The book is about:
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The stories we tell ourselves about the world
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The enlightening—and often conflicting—experience of being a tourist in South Africa
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The absurdities of life in the digital age
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And the search for clarity in an increasingly complex and divided cultural landscape​
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You’ll find reflections on politics, history, sport, and all the weird little cultural contradictions we’re forced to live with. It’s irreverent, honest, and occasionally a little unhinged (in a good way, mostly).
