Nadiah Abd Manaf

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“The Pirahã (pronounced Pee-da-HAN) are one of the most primitive tribes known; hunter-gatherers with very little material culture, they are basically unique in having no mythology, no oral history, no fiction, a language with only eleven phonemes and according to Everett no recursion, and...”

“The Pirahã (pronounced Pee-da-HAN) are one of the most primitive tribes known; hunter-gatherers with very little material culture, they are basically unique in having no mythology, no oral history, no fiction, a language with only eleven phonemes and according to Everett no recursion, and seemingly unable to plan more than a day in advance. Everett came to them as an evangelical Protestant missionary, learned their language in order to translate the New Testament and in the process became a professor of linguistics, and, unable to make any converts, ended up abandoning his own Christian beliefs. The book divides into two parts, the first basically ethnographic description and the second linguistic; the primitive features of the Pirahã language have become controversial because they contradict Chomsky's theories of the universality of grammar (especially the absence of recursion, which for Chomsky is the essential quality of human language.) Quite an interesting book.”

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James F reviewed a book.

“An ethnographic study of the Napo Runa, a Quichua-speaking people on the Napo River in Ecuador. At the beginning, this seemed very abstract and academic, but it became much more concrete as it went on. The chapter on wedding rituals was interesting. A central theme of the book was that...”

“An ethnographic study of the Napo Runa, a Quichua-speaking people on the Napo River in Ecuador. At the beginning, this seemed very abstract and academic, but it became much more concrete as it went on. The chapter on wedding rituals was interesting. A central theme of the book was that anthropologists often misunderstand cultures by thinking in terms of commodities and capitalist notions of exchange which do not apply. The book ended with a discussion of the 2001 uprising of the indigenous peoples against "dollarization" (the adoption of the American dollar in place of the former national currency."”

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• Rated 2 stars

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“The story of the author's four trips to the Amazon basin to find and observe the pink dolphin (boto). I say "find and observe" rather than "study" because the author is not a scientist who studies marine animals but a popular writer on nature (known for her similar books on tigers and golden...”

“The story of the author's four trips to the Amazon basin to find and observe the pink dolphin (boto). I say "find and observe" rather than "study" because the author is not a scientist who studies marine animals but a popular writer on nature (known for her similar books on tigers and golden bears). The book is a very personal memoir of her trip and her reactions to the dolphins. I enjoyed reading it and there are many informative digressions about the overall biology of the Amazon and the conservation problems. (The pink dolphin fortunately is not endangered, except to the extent that the entire rain forest is.) There was a little bit of romantic mysticism and she gives more space to (repetitive) legends about the botos transforming into humans to steal them away to an undersea city than I liked, but this was a minor irritation.”

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• Rated 2 stars

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“A biographically oriented history of nineteenth century American lepidopterists. The book begins with the early lives of some "Yankees", especially William Henry Edwards and Samuel Scudder; then some German immigrants, especially Herman Strecker and Augustus Grote. More figures appear in the...”

“A biographically oriented history of nineteenth century American lepidopterists. The book begins with the early lives of some "Yankees", especially William Henry Edwards and Samuel Scudder; then some German immigrants, especially Herman Strecker and Augustus Grote. More figures appear in the middle of the book, which also gives much more information on their activities and on the science of the native American butterflies and moths. The second half deals with Americans who studied foreign, especially tropical insects, and ends with the deaths of the people discussed and the transformation of American entomology from the study of insects for their own sakes as science and beautiful creatures to the study of how to eradicate them as "pests" with the rise of capitalist monoculture and the decline of family farming.

This book had a lot of information I had no idea of; I hadn't realized for example that entomologists were generally the first naturalists to accept Darwinism and provide evidence for natural selection. The book could have been better organized, and there was more about disputes and private quarrels than I would have preferred, but it was an interesting read.”

Conner H rated a book.

• Rated 2 stars

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“A quick HOT & SPICY read!”

“ A quick HOT & SPICY read! ”

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• Rated 3 stars

James F reviewed a book.

“The sequel to Noli me tangere. This is written in a more direct style than the first book, less description and background and more action; it is also more openly political, with dialogues and speeches, as well as sermonizing by the author in his own voice. Like Uncle Tom's Cabin...”

“The sequel to Noli me tangere. This is written in a more direct style than the first book, less description and background and more action; it is also more openly political, with dialogues and speeches, as well as sermonizing by the author in his own voice. Like Uncle Tom's Cabin this a book which is more important for its political influence than for its values as a novel, although it is exciting enough as a story. Many of tthe incidents are realistic enough, as they are mainly taken from real events, but the underlying plot is not believable; it seems to be an excuse for the political discussion. Five years after writing it Rizal was executed for "subversion" by the Spanish authorities, and became a martyr on the eve of the "independence" of the Philippines from Spain (thwarted in reality by the new colonial power, the United States.)”

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• Rated 4 stars

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• Rated 3 stars

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