Customer Reviews

Gypsies: Wanderers of the World (National Geographic Special Publications)

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Being of part Gypsey background (Romanychal), I have seen too much literature about Gypsies from non-Gypsey writers that do not come close to reality. With this in mind, Gypsies are not ready to give & share real inside information to outsiders due to prejudice and hostility etca.
What is unique about this book is that Bart McDowell had travelled with an English-Gypsey couple as the passport to retrace the Gypsey routes through Europe back to India. While along the way noticing differences among the people with a common thread of similarity that has endured a thousand years.
This book shows the vast diversity in beautiful photographs, as well as being very well written.
This has been the very-best book I have seen about Gypsey history,politics,culture,and life!
There are too many other books filled with fiction while this one is filled with soul.

Being of a Gypsey=Romanychal background, I recomend this wonderful book with it's fabulous photos and close to exact written story from the Lees who are true Gypsies in England that guide us thru France & Germany toward our Gypsey origins inward back to India, toward the beginning of our story of one thousand + years ago!
There are too many books that are filled with imagination and fantasy. This book is not one of those!
Stevan Romano
(Romanychal)

Although this book was published in 1970, long before Gypsies, or Rom, organized into unions or learned to speak with one voice of their true selves, National Geographic did an amazing job presenting the Rom as they are.

In 210 pages cluttered with remarkable color photographs from the life of the Rom from Europe to the Middle East and India, this book presents the journey the author took with Clifford Lee, A Rom and the author of the book's forward, through Western and Eastern Europe and on through the Near East to the Indus watershed.

All of the Rom they met along the way had "the same problem with those gorgios--non-Gypsies--who want to force their ways upon us without realizing that we want no such thing, and with self-styled 'experts' who so often portray us either as happy children of nature... or as thieves menacing society." Says Lee, Bart McDowell let the Rom speak for themselves.

He and photographer Bruce Dale show the Rom as they are.

A wonderful book.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

Great book with fabulous color photographs of the Roma in their daily lives.
Take a trip from the comfort of your armchair along with the author and renown English Roma Clifford Lee as they retrace what is believed to be the original migration trail of the Roma people through the European countries all the way back to India. FASCINATING, ENTERTAINING and FUN! Highly recommended for the average person who is interested in learning more about the "Gypsies".

This long out of print book arrived early and in better shape then expected. An excellent and very good deal indeed.