African pygmys, attested in ancient Egyptian and Greek texts as being nearly mythical inhabitants of central Africa, are described here in an Anthropological tome. I must re-read as I remember little from it. ( )

Although written by an anthropologist, Colin Turnbull described the life of the Mbuti pygmies with such color, exuberance, detail and a healthy dash of humor that you cannot help but be entranced by this book. It reads like a novel, not a diary or journal. The author lived for three years with them in the Ituri Forest in northwestern Belgian Congo (later Zaire, now DR of Congo). His affection for them is immediately apparent, and his intimate descriptions of individuals allow the reader to enjoy the characters in the book and their lives.

However, there are times when either the author is taking the mickey out of you, or else the Mbuti are taking the mickey out of him. When he takes a few of them on a drive out of the forest into the savanna where buffalo are grazing they wonder what kind of ants are those animals. The animals are far far away, but the people have never ever seen an open vista, so they assume the animals are very close. Good for a few chuckles, but not believable.

In any case, you won't be disappointed reading this book. Instead, you will feel like your are eating a delicious meal with a fine wine, a trip into another world that is almost certainly gone by now, 60 years on. ( )

The life of the MaMbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Forest (Congo) as described by a young anthrologist who lived among the young men for 3 years during the 1950's. This book delightfully challenges the truths we may have found about families, nature and theology. ( )

The Forest People, by the late Turnbull, is probably required reading for any new student of Anthropology. Even though it borders on the romantic and some its flow is decisively novel-like, Turnbull's book was then a refreshing look into the culture of the Mbuti Pygmy, a marginalized and little-understood group. I read this book during my first year of college, and together with Elizabeth Fernea's Guests of the Sheikh, it accounts for the beginning of my interest in ethnographic studies. Books like this one are truly like a window into another, completely foreign and utterly fantastic, world. ( )

Huh. I don't know what edition berthirsch read, but the 1961 one is neither a "tale" nor "the story of a small Pygmy tribe," and there's no suspense. It's a typical 1950s narrative ethnography, as engagingly written as such things tend to be. It describes the economic, social, and [for lack of a better word] cultural practices of BaMbuti (a.k.a. Pygmies), how those practices change over the course of the year, and how they connect to the lives of village farmers. It's written, as I say, in the narrative mode, but does not form a continuous narrative — rather, it's a series of extended anecdotes illuminating one or more aspects of BaMbuti life in that place at that time. It's informative but not data-rich: there is, for example, no kinship diagram (although this is one of the few ethnographies for which that actually would have been useful).

(If you've ever heard the anecdote about the forest-dweller seeing distant animals on the plains for the first time and thinking they were insects, it's from this book [next-to-last chapter]). ( )