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The Harmless People
336 pages, 1989
history
999 books
biographies & memoirs
997 books“A study of primitive people which, for the 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. Because 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 desert life, in which we perceive human traits as familiar as our own.
In The Harmless People, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas takes us on a journey to explore the unique culture of the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. She provides a deep insight into their customs, beliefs, and way of life, which is largely untouched by modern civilization.
The Bushmen's ability to adapt to their harsh environment is a key theme in the book. They have developed survival skills and knowledge that have allowed them to thrive in the Kalahari Desert for thousands of years. This teaches us the importance of adaptability in our own lives.
The Bushmen place a high value on community and sharing, which is a stark contrast to the individualistic culture of the modern world. The book encourages us to look into our own societies and question whether we could benefit from a more communal way of life.
The Harmless People shows us how the Bushmen live in harmony with nature, respecting and preserving their environment. This is a lesson we can all learn from, especially in the face of the current environmental crisis.
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas uses storytelling to bring the Bushmen's culture to life, showing us their rituals, hunts, and daily life. This highlights the power of storytelling as a tool for understanding and appreciating different cultures.
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