Customer Reviews

The Healing Land: The Bushmen and the Kalahari Desert

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After getting used to mystical experiences over the past 12 years in Botswana's Tsodilo Hills and in Bushmanland, in north-eastern Namibia, I can attest that this author has been there and seen a world that's magical beyond most Westerners' imaginings. Anyone who wants to know the real Southern Africa - that is, the incredibly harsh yet enigmatic environment that thrived prior to both the Bantu and Colonial influences - will find this book a most satisfying introduction.

Rupert Isaacson took an amazing journey when he went to the Kalahari to re-discover the colonial roots of his anscestors and found what he didn't expect--that his family had unwittingly contributed to the demise of a great and important people--the Bushmen. Upon meeting this hidden and displaced culture, he began a crusade to to right his inherited Karma. This book is the beginning of his journey of discovery of a remarkable people and their fight to survive in a world, that like many others, would choose to eliminate their indiginous peoples for money and power. He now, as I understand it, runs an organization called "The Indiginous Peoples Fund", helping the Bushman to reclaim their land rights and their culture. This book was the beginning of that journey. I hope h e writes a follow up book as he fight grows more successful. The book is written with great heart and love and remarkable insight into a culture so misunderstood. I have never been to South Africa and because of the book's in depth description, I felt as if I now can taste some of what it must be like. Truly a journey worth taking.

This is the amazing story of Rupert Isaacson's own family story and his quest into the African mystic. His search for a healer amongst the Kalahari bushman takes the reader into the African heartland with all with breathtaking descriptions of nature and people. It was astonishing to me to learn about the beauty and mystic in these places when all you hear in the news about Africa is war and famine.

A PIERCING INSIGHT INTO ALL DISPOSED AND/OR INDIGINEOUS PEOPLES. A MUST READ FOR ANYONE WHO WISHES TO UNDERSTAND THE LOSS AND PAIN AND RAGE BEING EXPRESSED ON THE PLANET TODAY.

THE READER IS INVITED TO WITNESS AS IN UNEXPECTED MOMENTS RUPERT HIMSELF TOUCHES WHAT GLEAMS AT THE HEART OF THIS CULTURE - AND WITHOUT DIATRIBE OR RANCOR REVEALS WHAT HAS BURIED IT ALIVE. NOTES OF HOPE REST IN THE PROPHECIES AND ARE ECHOED IN THE PROFOUND RESPECT THAT ABIDES IN ALL HE DESCRIBES.

If you want information about the culture, politics, history, and future of the Bushmen, do not bother with this book. If you want a frequently dull personal memoir, try it. Mr.Isaacson is not Robert Kaplan, nor Paul Theroux. That is, he is neither knowledgable nor capable of bringing vivid perspective to new places. In a single word, he is sophmoric.

What bunch of [junk],(...) ive been to kalahari and it truly is not like he says,Read a map before you read this,a total waste of my time.