David William Lister Read (23 April 1922 – 2 July 2015) was an author of autobiographical works which reveal a profound knowledge of Maasai history.
[citation needed] At the outbreak of the Second World War, he joined the Kenya Regiment and later trained with the Royal Air Force and served with the King's African Rifles in Abyssinia, Madagascar and Burma.
However, after Independence was granted to Tanganyika in 1961, his properties began to be gradually eroded, during which period he was employed part-time by the Anglo American Corporation in Zambia as an Agricultural Consultant.
[citation needed] The book covers Read's adventures between seven and fourteen years in the Serengeti, homeland of the Maasai, whose customs and lifestyle he reports, as seen through the eyes of a child.
Jonathan Taylor writes: "I learnt more about the Masai by reading Barefoot Over the Serengeti than I have from any of the countless scholarly anthropology tomes of colourful coffee table books written about them".
During six years employment by the Tanganyika Veterinary Department in Dodoma he roamed the African savannas of his childhood, investigating ritual tribal killings and working as a livestock marketing officer.
(p. xi) Read's works, covering a period of seven decades, not only describe a unique life starting from the adoption of the young boy by the magnificent Maasai tribe whose influence never ceased through his adolescence and manhood; it is also an ethnographic document of a native African group, who rely on oral tradition and whose knowledge and history is, by the accuracy and the empathy which characterise Read's novels, preserved from amnesia.