Book Description
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
For All Confidential Matters and Inquiries
Satisfaction Guaranteed for all Parties
Under Personal Management
The phenomenal success of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency continues with the bestselling Kalahari Typing School for Men, the fourth book in the series.
Mma Precious Ramotswe is content. Her business is well established with many satisfied customers, and in her mid-thirties (“the finest age to be”) she has a house, two adopted children, a fine fiancé. But, as always, there are troubles. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni has not set the date for their marriage. Her able assistant, Mma Makutsi, wants a husband. And worse, a rival detective agency has opened in town—an agency that does not have the gentle approach to business that Mma Ramotswe’s does. But, of course, Precious will manage these things, as she always does, with her uncanny insight and her good heart.
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Alexander McCall Smith is a professor of medical law at Edinburgh University. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and taught law at the University of Botswana. He is the author of more than fifty books: novels, stories, children¿s books, and specialized titles such as
Forensic Aspects of Sheep. He lives in Scotland.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Customer Reviews:
Another Fun Volume of the Ladies' Detective Agency.......2007-08-13
This is a solid edition to the collection which means this will be a short review! The only thing I will note about this book is that I felt the ending and the resolution of one of the "mysteries" was a bit too easy. That being said; the book on a whole is just as enjoyable as the rest of the series. I can't wait to get into the 5th book!
the least mysterious so far.......2007-06-28
At this point, entering the fourth book in the series, we are all accustomed to Mma Ramotswe and her alternative brand of mystery. One or two mysteries carry through the book, with a couple more short ones in the midst, balanced with a healthy serving of Mma Ramotswe's wisdom and her reflections on the greatness of Botswana. Always relaxing and mildly suspenseful.
This one has a subtle difference: there are no actual mysteries. The agency takes on two cases: one involves tracking down some old acquaintances, and the solution to the other is apparent to the reader within a few lines of the client walking through the door.
What does that leave us with? Mma Ramotswe has competition in the form of a rude man who sets up a rival detective agency (Trust your problems to a _man_!, says the ad). The foster children experience growing pains. Mma Makutsi seeks a way to earn some extra cash. Mma Ramotse dispenses wisdom and reflects on Botswana.
This is still a very pleasant read, Mma Ramotswe has some good insights to share, and the developments in the characters' personal lives are interesting. If you are lucky enough to have access to the audiobook, Lisette Lecat's narration is excellent and soothing as always. I'm glad I read it, but don't come looking for mystery.
I'm totally hooked!! .......2007-06-04
Having found this series a little less than a month ago, I find myself totally hooked on the characters and setting that Mr. McCall Smith describes. I found this book rich and "meaty" with tremendously uplifting references to the African culture and Botswana. I am thankful that this is a prolific author as my thirst for his writing is tremendous!!! It is wonderful to feel this way again, it doesn't often happen.
Dusty Days In Boswana.......2007-05-14
Another polished gem where the No1 Ladies Detective Agency unknot the thorny problems of life over cups of bush tea. Precious has her sturdy feet firmly on the ground and her very traditional build projects the air of confidence that is so soothing to the callers passing through their door. The interplay between the two women is always a joy and deftly done. Precious is keen to see that her assistant should find true happiness in her life. Much the same as she has, but then she isn't hampered by a difficult complexion and very large glasses. Not to mention a prickly personality, although her assistant is a very good person with a good heart.
Meanwhile her assistant often yearns for just a little more glamour and excitement in her life, she knows she is not one of the pretty girls who get easy lives and rich husbands. Not only that, she is always in need of extra money even though her boss pays her as well as she can, so to make up the shortfall she sets up the Kalahari Typing School For Men. Reasoning quite rightly that men don't want to be shamed by having the ladies outshine them. The classes prove a great success and before too long teacher finds she is being wooed by one of her pupils. But sadly he isn't quite what he seems to be. There are others masquerading as something else and they must also be unmasked. But our ladies are up to the tasks, Precious never loses sight of what is important and knows just when to step in and when to hang back.
Problems are solved, hearts eased and things are put back to rights without too much harm done. So life trundles on and Precious carries on pottering about in a tiny white van that one day must surely die. Just not yet.
Once you get to know these books am sure you will also love to reading and re-read them as it is like sharing a cup of tea with a dear friend. More to the point it is tea with a friend full of good advice and accumulated wisdom.
a whole new meaning to the term "sleeping with a man".......2007-05-01
I love this book and this series. The dialouge is witty, the stories are creative. I love the way that Mma Ramotswe thinks and handles problems. I also really enjoy all the other charachters. I loved seeing Mma Makutsi open up her school and feel successful. I reccommend this series to everyone that I know.
Customer Reviews:
Great "fly on the wall" ethnography of !Kung life.......2005-03-27
Taking a medical anthropology course, the teacher happened to assign this obscure ethnography of the Kalahari !Kung. It's an easy read, a fast read, and if you lend a bit of trust to the author Richard Katz, you get a critical view into the probably now vanished !Kung of South Africa (they've been placed on reservations by the then white South African government). The focus of this ethnography is the ritual healing dances of the !Kung, where healers dance to attain "num", an ancestral/divine energy that has tons of physiological affects, whereby they achieve "kia", an altered state of consciousness utilized in their mode of healing. Films I've seen of the Kalahari !Kung show the healers screaming (known as kowhedili) and "pulling sickness" from fellow tribesmen and women. This book is a great read about a modern hunter-gatherer tribe, by now probably vanished from the face of the earth. Indexicality incompatibility is fairly bridged by Katz, and his concluding recommendation about traditional !Kung practices and correlations to modern cummunity medical outreach strategy is useful. An old ethnography (1982) but a goodie.
Book Description
A study of primitive people which, for beauty of...style and concept, would be hard to match." -- The New York Times Book Review
In the 1950s Elizabeth Marshall Thomas became one of the first Westerners to live with the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert in Botswana and South-West Africa. Her account of these nomadic hunter-gatherers, whose way of life had remained unchanged for thousands of years, is a ground-breaking work of anthropology, remarkable not only for its scholarship but for its novelistic grasp of character. On the basis of field trips in the 1980s, Thomas has now updated her book to show what happened to the Bushmen as the tide of industrial civilization -- with its flotsam of property rights, wage labor, and alcohol -- swept over them. The result is a powerful, elegiac look at an endangered culture as well as a provocative critique of our own.
"The charm of this book is that the author can so truly convey the strangeness of the desert life in which we perceive human traits as familiar as our own....The Harmless People is a model of exposition: the style very simple and precise, perfectly suited to the neat, even fastidious activities of a people who must make their world out of next to nothing."
-- The Atlantic
Customer Reviews:
A firsthand, close-up view of a little-known and little-understood people.......2007-07-14
The Bushmen are well known - and intriguing - to phoneticians, because Bushman languages, along with Bushman-influenced languages such as Zulu and Xhosa, are the only ones in the world with linguistic clicks. As a teacher of phonetics, that was my own original motivation for reading this book. I also thought it would be useful background to have before visiting South Africa. Finally, I met a very friendly and kind Nama-speaking Bushman in Minnesota once, and that further piqued my curiosity about his home culture.
This book is truly a rich, firsthand resource on what traditional Bushman life was like in the 1950s. The Bushmen may be praised for their cleverness at being able to live in a land with very little visible water; but in this book you will learn that in fact many Bushmen died of thirst and hunger, not to mention disease, when times were unusually hard.
One half of the book is dedicated to each of two Bushman groups with whom the author and her family stayed for extended periods, the Gikwe, and the !Kung, of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" fame. It was fascinating to read about how they courted, married, divorced, gave birth, chose names, cared for children and the aged, went through puberty, gathered and hunted, interacted with animals, told stories, died, and dealt with the spirits of the dead. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of Bushman music, e.g. singing accompanied by playing on the stringed guashi, the bow, and the te k'na (mbira/kalimba/thumb piano), and the ritual dancing that sometimes went with it. Thomas states that music is by far the strongest of the Bushman arts.
Mentions of some of the effects of intruding white people on the Bushmen's lives may give you pause. The Bushmen treated their white visitors with great openness and kindness. You can praise the generosity of the white chroniclers when they give gifts of food, clothes, and other useful items, and feel relieved when a formerly powerful hunter with a gangrenous leg is taken to be fitted with a peg prosthesis. Yet Thomas also mentions that some Bushmen had been tracked down and taken into slavery by people who had followed the tracks left by Thomas's family's vehicle on a previous visit. And other Bushmen had their guards down when whites came to kidnap them to do forced labor - the Bushmen welcomed them, expecting them to be as friendly and harmless as Thomas's clan.
Thomas goes to great pains to depict the people she observed as accurately and honestly as possible, consciously avoiding the "noble savage" trap. Bushmen shared everything - because it was expected and it would cause great jealousy, conflict and bad relations if they did not; they did not take anything they knew to belong to another; and they had a strong sense of family and cared for those unable to care for themselves. But they practiced infanticide if a baby was born while the previous one was still nursing, since there would probably not be enough milk for both to survive. They could also be vain, jealous and petty, and they could be cruel in razzing people with obvious weaknesses - like any other humans.
You will pick up new Bushman-specific vocabulary reading this book, including words like kaross (the skin wraparound which was a Bushman's usual attire), veld food, pan (a water hole), scherm, gemsbok, tsama melons, bi root, and tsi nuts.
Thomas includes two family tree diagrams at the front of the book to help the reader sort out the relationships between the characters in her accounts. I found these most helpful and referred often to them.
Beyond providing informative content, Thomas is an engaging writer. This is all the more impressive since she wrote the book in her early twenties.
Thomas's book is one of the very few sources of detailed information on the Bushmen. I read the original edition from 1959, so I haven't seen the updated parts on how the Bushmen were doing by the 1980s. Although a lot of what I've heard about Bushman societies today is rather negative and depressing, I look forward to finding out more, and hope the various Bushman groups manage somehow to preserve their remarkable languages and the best of their unique cultures and traditions.
bush people.......2007-03-01
a long slightly boring recitation of life with the bush people. there are flashes of very interesting insights about people and western civilizations impact on indigenous peoples.
Beautiful!!.......2006-03-07
I could hardly put the book down. The writings were simple and descriptive. I have always found Tribal life very interesting and of all the books I have read hearing the Author's firsthand account was amazing. Listening to the people's tales and day to day life is something I am going to miss now that I have finished the book.
A Fascinating Look at An Indigenous People.......2003-10-04
I read 'The Harmless People' for my anthropology class and I enjoyed it. I liked the writing style and the story kept me interested and learning the whole time.
Classic, well-written, and enjoyable study of the Bushmen.......2003-08-25
This is a detailed, fascinating, and even beautiful account of the author's field study of the Kung! Bushman. Along with the Australian aborigines, the Bushman of the Kalahari desert, who inhabit an arid tableland in southwest Africa, are considered one of the two most primitive cultures in existence. The Bushmen aren't native to the Kalahari but were forced there as a result of conflicts with the white man and other tribes after the 17th century. Thomas gives a detailed account of their way of life and how they are able to survive in one of the most desolate places on earth. The Bushmen are very short of stature, averaging only 4 feet, 10 inches tall, and their skin has a yellowish tinge that is different from the blacker skin of their surrounding neighbors. The Kalahari has no surface water, and the rare rainfall immediately dries up. One of the few ways they get moisture as well as food is the tsama melon, which grows underground. The tsama melons are so important that the rights to a particular locale are inherited, which is unusual among the Bushmen. To survive in this harsh environment, the Bushmen have become expert botanists and can identify over 300 different kinds of plants, and they hunt antelope with poisoned arrows. Marriage among the Bushmen can occur at a very early age, but for women it is considered inappropriate to become fully sexually active and to marry before the age of 12. After having been almost completely wiped out between the 17th and the 19th century through conflicts with other tribes and the white man, there are now about 50,000 Bushmen inhabiting the Kalahari.
Years later, when I saw the movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy, I recalled my first encountering the Bushmen in Thomas's wonderful little book. Several years after that, I had the opportunity to hear Jamie Uys speak, the south African director of the movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy, and he also described what it was like to work with and live in the Kalahari with the Bushmen during the making of his movie. Both he and Thomas commented that there was something very likeable about the Kalahari Bushmen, who now live very peaceably in their little arid paradise with relatively little conflict and strife. Well, paradise isn't exactly the word for the inhospitable environment where they live, but nevertheless the Bushmen came across in both Thomas's and Uys's accounts as overall quite happy and content with their life. Ever since reading this book, I have thought it ironic to consider that the more advanced cultures in other parts of the world, including those of us in the modern western countries, who are considerably more advanced, probably live no more happy and less stressful lives than the primitive Bushmen. Of course, one must be careful about the "Noble Savage" fallacy, but in the case of the Bushmen it seems to be true. This book is an updated edition of the one I read many years ago in college. Overall a classic study that takes its place alongside other great anthropological classics of Africa like Colin Turnbull's The Forest People, about the pygmies.
Book Description
The Bradt guide to Botswana concentrates on the prime regions for travelers in the north of the country, with the essentials on the gateway cities of Gaborone and Maun. The Okavango Delta is a wetland paradise and one of the top destinations in Africa for wildlife enthusiasts, who will delight in the thorough descriptions of the unique ecosystem and its multitude of bird and plant life. Other key regions covered in depth are the Chobe National Park--an important conservation area--the Linyanti Swamps, Central Kalahari Game Reserve, and Tsodilo Hills with their wealth of bushman rock art.
Features include:
*In-depth coverage of national parks and game reserves, with details of where best to see each species
*Unrivaled guidance on safari camps and lodges for this major destination for up-market safari visitors
*GPS points for bush navigation catering to fly-drive visitors
*Background to the culture and people of the region
Customer Reviews:
This book was incomplete.......2007-08-18
This travel book of Botswana does not cover all of the wildlife viewing areas of the country. We will be traveling to the Tuli reserve on the Eastern edge and wanted to see some information on the private parks in that area as well as the lodges. The book didn't cover any of that, which was pretty disappointing.
Book Description
An account of the author’s grueling, but ultimately successful, journey in 1957, through Africa’s remote, primitive Kalahari Desert, in search of the legendary Bushmen, the hunters who pray to the great hunters in the sky.
Customer Reviews:
van der Post right on.......2007-06-27
Laurens van der Post is frequently and correctly cited for his effusive language and exaggerations, but this account of the Bushmen and their environs is fairly close to the truth and makes great reading. I ordered this copy to replace the one I lent to my professor of African Studies at the Air Force War College (which he kept). He thought it was one of the best expositions of the life and circumstances of the bushmen and based on my limited knowledge from classwork on the subject it seems to be on target.
I Loved the Book Anyway.......2007-05-25
It has been twenty years since I read this book, but it left a strong impression on me for its beautiful writing and images. In spite of what the one Amazon reviewer said, I would still recommend the book for its adventure and wonder, even if it is not an entirely true story. Just keep in mind that it might have a big dash of fiction. In a strange way, though, it makes the book even more interesting.
The one Amazon reviewer said, "Anyone who is thinking about reading this book should know that VDP was a major BS artist. Very good at it too, was a friend of royalty and also Jung. If you can find it, read J.D.F. Jones "Storyteller: The Lives of Laurens Van Der Post". To his credit, he did oppose apartheid."
Behind any book, there is often a very strange reality.
A book filled with love and dignity.......2004-10-07
An older friend of mine met Laurens Van der Post in Australia and described him as "a wonderful man." A large part of the joy of reading "Kalahari," his best-known book, comes from the experience of his transparent honesty and honest heart. His writing style is as wonderful as the man was--unpretentious, without "side," and ever positive and life-affirming. Van der Post did a fine service in revealing how trivial and unconnected our modern traits of cynicism and meaninglessness appear before the Bushmen's selfless creed. This is one of the great books of pilgrimage.
Should come with warning label.......2002-01-08
Anyone who is thinking about reading this book should
know that VDP was a major BS artist. Very good at it too,
was a friend of royalty and also Jung. If you can find it,
read J.D.F. Jones "Storyteller: The Lives of Laurens Van
Der Post". VDP was constantly reinventing himself. Many
of his stories about everything from his war record to
his Bushman connections were exaggerated or just plain
invented. People loved to hear this stuff about the great
white hunter, the ancient heart of Africa, blah blah blah.
To his credit, he did oppose apartheid.
If you want an readable book on the Bushmen, try Elizabeth
Marshall Thomas' "The Harmless People". At least she actually
knew them!
BTW The film is called "The Lost World of the Kalahari",
BBC 1958. Don't know if you can get it on video. A better bet
would be "Kalahari Desert People", by John Marshall.
More About Van Der Post than the Bushmen.......2001-11-13
Laurens Van der Post is one of those writers -- at least on the evidence of this book -- for whom it is not enough simply to master his material; he also has to dominate it. His descriptions and accounts of the bush of Southern Africa are indeed compelling. Unfortunately, they are far too often buried under considerably less interesting material. I wanted to see and hear a whole lot more of the Kalahari and the Bushmen and a whole lot less of Van der Post's incessant insistence on his relation to the desert, his relation to the Bushman, his troubles with the cinematographer he hired to photograph his search. Also, this book was written in 1959, in the United States a time well before the Civil Rights movement and in Southern Africa a time of apartheid and white colonialism. Van Der Post is very much a man of his era and the book is replete with paternalism and grousings about the black porters in his expedition. Finally, his leadership is abysmal. He takes his party to a huge swamp in the Okavango where to any casual observer the elusive Bushman (Bushman, Laurens, not Waterman) would be least likely to be found. This gross miscalculation takes up well over a third of the book and must have sorely tried the patience of those in his expedition even more than it tried the patience of this reader. In fairness, for those unfamiliar with the Bushman and the Kalahari and Okavango of Southern Africa, this book does serve, despite Van der Post's flawed, and heavy-handed writing.
Book Description
This is the story of the Owens' travel and life in the Kalahari Desert. Here they met and studied unique animals and were confronted with danger from drought, fire, storms, and the animals they loved. This best-selling book is for both travelers and animal lovers.
Customer Reviews:
Cry of the Kalahari.......2007-10-04
Wonderful book that enables one to live the experiences of this dedicated couple who gave so much to the animals of Africa through their research. This book tore at my heartstrings and made me even more excited about my upcoming trip to Africa.
Seven Years in the African Desert.......2007-07-08
Two grad students, having married shortly after their University of Georgia college education began their graduate studies in zoology in the Kalahari desert in Botswana. I've heard grad students' lives are poor and hard, but this couples' 7 year field study takes the mealie-meal. They carefully rationed water and gasoline and lived on mealie-meal (cornmeal), ostrich eggs, and antelope meat; they'd nearly run out of money and write grants to pay for their supplies only and with no money left to fly home. They survived on these paltry sums and did their research in temperatures that sometimes got as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit surrounded by lions, leopards, and cheetahs in the midst of one of Africa's most inhospitable areas.
This true story is truly amazing and I can't wait to read their other books about Africa. The book was published in 1984 and I wonder if their research had any influence in the IMAX film The Serengeti which is about the greatest wildebeest migration that happens in the Serengeti area in Tanzania and Kenya. In the back of the book is a brief recommendation for wildlife management in the Kalahari desert. In reading this, one can't but be reminded of Jane Gooddall's and the Adamson's work with wildlife in East Africa. It's also a survivors' tale, adventuresome and exciting, but most of all great research. Excellent all around!
A wonderful adventure.......2007-05-02
I do not wish to write a review, other than to say I read this book many years ago and it has stayed with me. Mark and Delia's story was fascinating and I was enthralled with their descriptions of the Kalahari and the animals they observed. I wanted to rate this book, so that the rating could be used in making future recommendatipons for me.
Cry of the Kalahari .......2007-01-10
This is a fantastic and TRUE story that will capture the hearts of anyone who loves nature, wild animals, adventure, hardship, and over coming huge odds. It is a love story on several levels. It is a story about love of nature, love of animals, and the author couples love for each other. Excellent reading.
The Kalahari!.......2006-09-30
Gripping and enthralling:A narrative of the adventures of two nascent scientists in the vastness and rapidly disappearing Kalahari region of Botswana.
I was swept away by this book; the personal struggles of the young couple, and their passion for the animals in this remote region.
A classic of adventure and nature liturature.
Highly recommended!
Average customer rating:
- The great divide
- Good beginning but goes no where
- Feel the passion, hear the experiences of the Bushman.
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The Heart of the Hunter: Customs and Myths of the African Bushman
Laurens Van Der Post
Manufacturer: Harvest/HBJ Book
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ASIN: 0156400030 |
Book Description
The author’s passionate concern for Africa and for the human spirit is evident in this portrait of the “First People” of southern Africa, the Bushmen. Van der Post describes his desert travels, the splendid landscape and wildlife, and his encounters with the Bushman, an elusive culture. Drawings by Maurice Wilson.
Customer Reviews:
The great divide.......2004-07-16
I again with the earlier reviewer who pointed out the noticeable difference between the first part of this book and the latter; when Van der Post is recounting his experiences with the Bushmen (or San, if you prefer) and with various other folk who have come to inhabit the Kalahari the book is very interesting and informative. However, in the second half he feels the need to reinterpret the Bushmen's legends or myths through a Jungian perspective, a treatment I found neither compelling nor convincing. While the fragments of the Bushmen's tales are interesting and Van der Post's ruminations are occasionally thought provoking, I didn't particularly enjoy his technique of intercutting between a few sentences of the one and heavy doses of the other. I suppose that for the reader who cares to interpret everything by archetypes and quests it might prove intriguing, but I soon came to find it rather annoying and distracting.
Good beginning but goes no where.......2000-03-16
This is a decent book because I love anthropology, ethnobotony, and learning about the Bushman. The beginning of this book was great, the author discusses how he and his group fall upon a thirsty group of Bushman. That part is great because it describes the interactions between the author and the Bushman. One of the author's mate on the trip, Dabe, a Bushman himself, also offers amazing commentary when they run into the Bushman.
However, in the middle, who knows what is going on. And the end was so confusing, but sorta okay. Van der Post discusses Bushman creation tales which are good in themselves because most books overlook the spiritual aspect of the Bushman--but the tales need more explanation--Van der Post talks over your head and says things don't need an explanation when they really do.
I would recommend reading 'Nisa, The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman' and 'The Harmless People' which both can be purchased online here!
Feel the passion, hear the experiences of the Bushman........1999-02-06
Sir Laurens van der Post has a gift for story telling that we should all explore. The customs and myths of the Bushmen are simple, complex, spiritual, entertaining but always there is a lesson to be learned. This book will feed your mind and you will find yourself through Laurens' craft eager for more. If you have shut down your heart and your imagination, feel the beat of this book and get your pulse back.
Book Description
Brought up on stories and myths of the Kalahari Bushmen, Rupert Isaacson journeys to the dry vast grassland -- which stretches across South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia -- to find out the truth behind these childhood stories. Deep in the Kalahari, Isaacson meets the last groups of Bushmen still living the traditional way, caught between their ancient culture and the growing need to protect and reclaim their dwindling hunting grounds. Little by little he is drawn into the fascinating web of ritual and prophecy that make up the Bushman reality. He hears of shamans who turn into lions, sees leopards conjured from the landscape as though by magic. He attends trance-inducing dances and witnesses incredible healings. But he also sees the heart-wrenching social problems of a dispossessed people. What follows is an adventure of an intensity he never could have predicted. The Healing Land records Isaacson's personal transformation amid these extraordinary people, and his passionate contribution to their political struggle. It captures his enchantment with the character, corruption, kindness, and confusion of a place that has wrenched itself from the Stone Age into the new millennium.
Customer Reviews:
Not about the Bushmen.......2005-12-10
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.
Wow what a piece of crap!.......2005-12-02
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.
MUST READ.......2005-03-06
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.
Not just a book, a fight against genocide.......2004-09-28
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 author knows his subject.......2003-05-15
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.
Average customer rating:
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Kalahari
A. Main
Manufacturer: Macmillan
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 033347175X |
Average customer rating:
- A "true" adventure.
- Highly recommended for bicycling enthuaists.
- Excellent, exciting reading!
- Advernture for Armchair Reader
- an unread review
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Across African Sand: Journeys of a Witch-Doctor's Son-in-Law
Phil Deutschle
Manufacturer: DIMI Press
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Binding: Paperback
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Dangerous Beauty - Life and Death in Africa: True Stories From a Safari Guide
ASIN: 093162536X |
Book Description
The incredible story of a 3,000 mile bicycle trek across the world's largest stretch of sand--the Kalahari and Namib Deserts of Southern Africa. The author relates his fantastic experiences--stalked by lions, charged by a herd of elephants, and his encounters with poisonous snakes, to name a few. He also tells of his numerous observations and experiences in living and teaching in Botswana for three years. These include his marriage to the daughter of a local witch-doctor.
Customer Reviews:
A "true" adventure........2000-12-18
Across African Sand is a an excellent example of what true adventure books should be. I emphasize the word "true" not simply to point out that events in the book are factual but to distinguish this work from books describing stunts. (To me a stunt is a once-in-a-lifetime event, filled with harum-scarum that a more skilled traveler would have avoided and usually detailing a significant departure from the main stream of the writer's life.) By contrast, Across African Sand comes across as the logical continuation of Phil Deutschle's career as a teacher and introspective traveler. Prior to embarking on his solo bicycle ride across the Kalahari and Namib deserts, Deutschle has spent three years living and teaching in an out-of-the way village in Botswana. An accomplished linguist, he has become fluent-to-conversant with several local languages, including that of the !Kung (Bushman) people, and thus we learn more of African life and thought than we would at the mercy of a more casual traveler. Deutschle clearly enjoys the company of the various people he falls in with along the way but also relishes the solitude which is such a significant part of his journey. Part of the success of the book is its skillful interweaving of events in the course of his cycling trek with flashbacks to his life as a teacher in a traditional Botswana village. Dimi Press has done a creditable job of putting the book together and its illustrations are great. I wholeheartedly recommend this as an interesting and insightful story of travel and adventure.
Highly recommended for bicycling enthuaists........2000-06-05
Across African Sand: Journey Of A Witch Doctor's Son-In-Law is the true life adventure story of Phil Deutschle's bicycle trip across 3,000 miles of African landscape. Along the way Phil was stalked by lions, charged by a herd of enraged elephants, fell in love with (and married) the daughter of a prominent witch doctor. Across African Sand is a compelling, engaging, fascinating biographical travelogue that relates an account of Phil's five years in Botswana (southern Africa) told in the form of flashbacks while he bicycles over the harsh Kalahari and Namib deserts, negotiating difficult African terrain, including soft sand and mud, during the course of his three month cycling adventure. Across African Sand is highly recommended for bicycling enthusiasts, armchair adventurers, and anyone who has ever yearned to travel the world, meet new people, and have adventures of their own!
Excellent, exciting reading!.......2000-05-04
This portrait will also fit neatly in travel sections: itportrays a bicyclist's journey across two deserts as he bikes throughsand, dodging lions and elephants and visiting remote parts of outback Africa. The adventure and observations of life in Botswana make for an excellent and exciting read.
Advernture for Armchair Reader.......2000-04-28
I bought this book for my husband. While he was reading it he kept interrupting my reading to tell me about what was happening in his book. In self defense, I picked it up as soon as he finished and immediately found myself transported to Africa. This book is much more than the story of the author's trip across the Kalahri on a bicycle. He writes about the people he meets and tells of their culture, the politics and economy of each group. He possesses interpersonal skills that allow him to relate to all sorts of people quickly and he writes about them with affection and respect. He describes plant and animal life along the way. Through flashbacks he tells of his earlier life and recent experience as a teacher in Africa. During the lonely stretches of his trip he wonders about his need to wander the globe. My husband said when he finished the book, "I've learned more about Africa from this book than all of the other books on the subject, put together" I agree, and I learned a great deal about life in general and men in particular from it.
an unread review.......2000-03-24
I think that Phil Deutschle is a wonderful author, having to put up with all of that stress of how to fit in time to writ after or at the time of his experiences. And just being able to adapt to a community so quick ; but at the same time working.
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