Theodore J. Waldeck was born in Brooklyn, New York. At an early age he went abroad with his parents and was educated in Vienna, Austria. He joined his first African expedition at the age of 18 with the Duke of Mecklenburg as leader and was later a flier during the first World War. After the War he returned to Africa as a member of the Frobenius Expedition and later organized and led several other expeditions to East Africa, Belgian Congo, Abyssinia, and the Sudan. In 1937-1938 he organized and conducted the Waldeck-Guiana Expedition to British Guiana. Out of his African experiences he wrote On Safari, the story of what it means to be an explorer.