The Forest People [Paperback]

Colin Turnbull (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0671640992 | ISBN-13: 978-0671640996 | Publication Date: July 2, 1987

The Forest People -- Colin M. Turnbull's best-selling, classic work -- describes the author's experiences while living with the BaMbuti Pygmies, not as a clinical observer, but as their friend learning their customs and sharing their daily life.

Turnbull conveys the lives and feelings of the BaMbuti whose existence centers on their intense love for their forest world, which, in return for their affection and trust, provides their every need. We witness their hunting parties and nomadic camps; their love affairs and ancient ceremonies -- the molimo, in which they praise the forest as provider, protector, and deity; the elima, in which the young girls come of age; and the nkumbi circumcision rites, in which the villagers of the surrounding non-Pygmy tribes attempt to impose their culture on the Pygmies, whose forest home they dare not enter.

The Forest People eloquently shows us a people who have found in the forest something that makes their life more than just living -- a life that, with all its hardships and problems and tragedies, is a wonderful thing of happiness and joy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Margaret Mead Adds an entirely new dimension to literature on primitive people. The book is constructed with great dexterity, so that the reader is carried along by the charm and movement of the narrative, almost unaware of the underpinning of arduous scientific field work that lies like bedrock below....The reader feels sheer delight in an entirely new world.

From the Foreword by Harry L. Shapiro Department of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History The book is exceptional....The reader can enter into...the exhilaration of participating in a culture other than his own....Reading The Forest People is an unusual and satisfying experience.

About the Author

Colin M. Turnbull was born in London, and now lives in Connecticut. He was educated at Westminster School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied philosophy and politics. After serving in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during World War II, he held a research grant for two years in the Department of Indian Religion and Philosophy at Banaras Hindu University, in India, and then returned to Oxford, where he studied anthropology, specializing in the African field.

He has made five extended field trips to Africa, the last of which was spent mainly in the Republic of Zaïre. From these trips he drew the material for his first book, The Forest People, an account of the three years he spent with the Pygmies of Zaïre.

Mr. Turnbull was a Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He is a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and a Corresponding Member of Le Musée Royal d'Afrique Centrale.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone (July 2, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671640992
• ISBN-13: 978-0671640996
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,601 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #1 in Books > History > Africa > Republic of the Congo
  • #4 in Books > History > Africa > Democratic Republic of Congo

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Check the Publisher carefully before you buy the printed version of "The Forest People.", September 16, 2010

By 

Kiwi (Mississauga, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Forest People (Paperback)

"The Forest People" is a very interesting book. Perhaps unfortunately in some cases (such as this), Amazon associates reviews of a book with different versions of the same book from different publishers. Unfortunately for us customers, Amazon is seeing a growing plague of new Print-On-Demand Publishers who are specialising in reprinting copyright-expired books. Such as "The Forest People." Some of these publishers produce quite good quality books, some do not.

A classic example of the "not good quality" is the imprint of "The Forest People" published by General Books LLC. A previous reviewer commented that the version he bought was unreadable. At a guess, the previous reviewer was unfortunate enough to buy the edition published by General Books LLC. Why unfortunate?

Well, the version published by General Books LLC is scanned in using OCR technology (and using pretty poor quality OCR scanning equipment and software from the look of their books), is overall of very poor print quality, automated reproduction with no index, no illustrations and an excessive number of typos.

To quote a few specifics from the publishers web site:
"We created your book using OCR software that includes an automated spell check. Our OCR software is 99 percent accurate if the book is in good condition. However, with up to 3,500 characters per page, even one percent can be an annoying number of typos....

After we re-typeset and designed your book, the page numbers change so the old index and table of contents no longer work. Therefore, we usually remove them. Since many of our books only sell a couple of copies, manually creating a new index and table of contents could add more than a hundred dollars to the cover price....

Our OCR software can't distinguish between an illustration and a smudge or library stamp so it ignores everything except type. We would really like to manually scan and add the illustrations. But many of our books only sell a couple of copies....

We created your book using a robot who turned and photographed each page. Our robot is 99 percent accurate. But sometimes two pages stick together. And sometimes a page may even be missing from our copy of the book. We would really like to manually scan each page and buy multiple copies of each original. But many of our books only sell a couple of copies....."

General Books LLC are flooding Amazon with these low quality publications (450,000+ listed under General Books LLC) and, unfortunately, many of them have the reviews associated with the original or with better quality imprints associated with them. The product description is totally misleading for the buyer that's not aware of this publisher. Also, if you do the "Look Inside" thing and check, you will see that the version displayed is actually another publishers edition and in fact is nothing like the General Books LLC version (which is rubbish, believe me). IMHO this is unethical marketing.

A general rule of thumb for these Print on Demand publishers is to take a look at the cover - if it's a good quality illustration that reflects the content, there's a table of contents, and when you do the Look Inside thing there's no disclaimer saying you're looking at another book, and they've used facsimile reproduction technology (rather than OCR), it's usually a pretty safe bet. Conversely, if any of these are missing, you're taking a chance on the quality. I've bought a few based on my selection criteria above and they've been good quality. General Books LLC however, is a publisher to steer clear of at all costs.

If you have been unfortunate enough to buy the General Books LLC version by mistake, you can return to Amazon for a full refund (but check Amazon's return policy and process first).

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SURRENDER YOURSELF INTO ITS MAGIC, September 29, 2000

By 

Kendrik Lau (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Forest People (Paperback)

I first read The Forest People when I was in college. I took an anthropology course, and I was absolutely enchanted by this book.

First of all, do not fear that this book is written by an anthropologist using dry and boring langauge and tried everything to stay objective thus being an impassion observer. This is not a book filled with statistics and boring observations and theories.

No, Turnbull described the life of the Mbuti pygmies with such color, exuberance, detail and a healthy dash of humour that you cannot help but just being entranced by this book. You will learn of their daily lives, their hissy fits with each other, their methods of punishment, their relationship with the "negro" villagers whom they think are animals because they do not understand the forest. You will see their marriage rites, the rituals of the Molimo and the celebration of the Elima, when young pygmy girls are first "blessed" by menstrual blood.

You will see the pygmies as individuals each with his or her own personality....Kenge the author's best friend, Moke an elderly and respected member of the Mbuti, Cephu the "bad hunter", beautiful Kidaya of the elima, who , Kondabate the pygmy belle who filed her teeth like a shark's, flirtatious Akidinimba with her infamously huge bosoms, "ugly" Aberi, Kamaikan, Kelemoke and even Amina, the daughter of a sub-chief from a nearby village. You will get to know them and feel as if you have known them all your lives.

The Forest People is one of the best books EVER written on anthropology. You can't help but think about how life, as simple as it seems for the pyymies, is still fill with both joy and tribulations. I have read this book many times and every time it still have not lost its magic on me.

This book was written in the 1960s. Turnbull have since passed away. I cannot help but think about what happaned to all these wonderful people we meet in the book today. Did Kenge have any children since? Did Kondabate ever had a child? Did Akidinimba stayed married?

I just wish that there's a sequel to this wonderful book.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A review on The Forest People by Colin Turnbull., January 25, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Forest People (Hardcover)

Colin Turnbull, the late English born Anthropologist and writer was the first to be able to study the pygmies of Africa first hand. The first to be accepted and befriended by these mysterious and beautiful people of the African Congo. In The Forest People Turnbull recalls his experience of living hidden within the forest with a family group of pygmies. He tells us the wearisome struggle that the pygmies battle for to protect thier culture and home. Turnbull also looks deeply into thier way of life and uncovers for us a world of playfullness and enchanting spiritualism. He teaches us the vital part that the rainforest itself plays in the pygmy's existance and also the holiness of all nature. This book was a delight to read and opened my eyes to the pure world that we live on but that is rarely seen.