Richard W. Bulliet

From late Antiquity to the age of motorized transportation, pack camels largely replaced wheeled vehicles in North Africa, the Middle East, and Iran. Bulliet's book is devoted to exploring the causes, circumstances, and consequences of this fact.

Spanning millennia from the domestication of the camel (perhaps in the third millenium BC) to the 20C, the Old World from Morocco to Mongolia, with an excursus to Australia were camels were introduced in the 19C, and disciplines from veterinary show more medicine to philology, the book gives the impression of being the work of a gentleman scholar, unconcerned with academic boundaries and happily citing the memoranda of colonial officers next to scientific papers and the Bible. One may at times find his conclusions shakily supported, and wonder about the representativeness of anecdotes, but the camel ride is certainly wild, scenic, and thought-provoking. show less

I had to read this for class and it is... very dense. The best way to enjoy this book and learn from it is to NOT do all the exhaustive assignments that the book recommends. I've seen other people rate this book poorly because of the work they had to do in class and I don't blame them.

This book is more enjoyable simply being read, with the assignments being optional if the readers finds one of the chapters particularly interesting and wants to study it more.

Historian Richard W. Bulliet teaches at Columbia University and – according to the blurb – well known for his work in Islamic history. Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers explores what Bulliet describes as four stages in the history of the human-animal relationship: separation, predomesticity, domesticity, and postdomesticity. As I write, I’ve only had the opportunity to peruse its contents but already one glaring error leaped off the page at me. He incorrectly associates Tom Regan with show more the University of North Carolina when it should have been North Carolina State University. It can be argued that this is an innocent error overlooked when the book was fact-checked but it does beg the question, How many more are there? I will put this prejudice aside and devote time to a serious read. Clearly, it deserves it and will discuss it in the future. show less

"Bulliet abandons the historian's typical habit of viewing Islamic history 'from the center'... Instead, he derives a lucid and accurate understanding of how and why Islam became... so rooted in the social structure of... people who lived far from the political locus..."