Hi There, i'm Jack.
How the Rhino Lost His Horn is my first book.
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I never really gave serious thought to writing my thoughts or stories down. Only real writers were allowed to write books. And I certainly wasn’t a real writer; I was just a tennis coach. But after being stuck inside for over a year when the pandemic hit, I stopped caring about all that and figured I’d give it a try.
I studied political journalism and international relations at university - writing-intensive degrees - so I was up for the challenge, but the seed had been planted long before that: back in grade school, the feedback I got from my teachers on almost every essay was "Jack, this is well written, but I can’t really tell if it answers the question."
What they didn’t know was that I always took this as a compliment.
This book, I hope, lives up to that glowing critique.
For more updates/other bits and pieces, make sure to follow me on substack (my blog) and instagram! ( ° ͜ʖ °)
I was born in the US, but visited England a lot growing up, thanks to my mom, who's from Sussex. This meant that I spent most of my time feeling like I was never quite in the right place - wherever I happened to be.​
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As I got older, this sense only grew, and it became clear that the standard issue high school to university to rat-race pipeline was not something I was cut out for. I was eager to get out and explore the world as soon as possible, even if I needed to do so independently (the public school system didn’t really have the tools, nor the time, to worry about kids like me).​
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The opportunity to do this came when I was 19. I’d just finished my first year of university, had learned very little, and was staring down tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Something had to change. I dropped out, and began to research how I could escape all of this (even if only for a few months). This led me to South Africa, a strange place for anyone from Central Pennsylvania to end up. Nevertheless, I loved, and was fascinated by it, and came back two more times over the next few years, living there for two years in total.​
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How the Rhino Lost It’s Horn is a book about those years: my strange, funny, and eye-opening adventures in South Africa, of course, but also my experiences and reflections from back home, the gaps in between.
I explore: political division (these years coincided with the rise of Trump), social media/technology, climate change/habitat destruction, the ethics of foreign aid, sport as a proxy for social/political change, and much more.