I am not completely finished reading the book. However, so far, I have found it entertaining and educational. It is amazing to me how the pygmies can exist in the forest with virtually none of what we would view as essentials. A very simple way of life.

the sole reason to read this book is the see personable accounts of relationships and mechanisms at work in immediate return hunter-gathering/foraging economies (and the nuances they had/have with the neighboring agriculturalists.). if people cant see that and are worried about whats 'romanticized', they better look more closely at civilization as a whole. its propaganda for Progress, destroying presence/place and linear Historical consciousness (over myth) is far more romantic and revisionist. look deeper to the works of James Woodburn, Nurit Bird-David, etc... and foraging peoples plight as invasive civilization tries to steal their land/place and autonomy.

This beautiful anthropoligical work told in a srory is extrenmle fascinating.THE FOREST PEOPLE echoes such works as USURPER AND OTHER STORIE, and SAN PEOPLE. I was completely captivated by this book, which is why I read it four times this winter. It is taking me a step forward in coming to terms with life's different perspectives.

This was a fantastic book. I had to read it for my Ethnology class and fell in love with the MaButi Pygmies. Turnbull does a great job of explaining the lives of the "forest people." His few years with the Pygmies is portrayed in this book. It is enchanting and amusing. I would recommend it to anyone.

I really liked this book. I had to read it for class, but i would recomend it to anyone. It was quick and easy to read. It was a good and sympathetic portrayal of these hunter gatherer peoples and it left me with a lot of respect for them and for the author.

There were only a couple of little things I would have changed about the book. I felt like a little too much had been edited out in some spots and the author was a little over sentamental at times. For my purposes i would have liked a little more of a scientific approach to some things, but it does make a very good story overall.

This book is like making a real trip into the Ituri rainforest- or more exactly into the lives of some of the most remarkable people you will ever meet. The Bambuti become so real for us in part because of Turnbull's narative skill, but more, I think, because they themselves are so real, such wonderful humans. This, we want to believe, is what our species is really like, the way we were meant to be.
Like all gathering- hunting people, the Bambuti are on intimate terms with mother nature. For them this means their beloved forest, which is a benign, nurturing, and protective mother. People who live outside the forest are scared to go near it. But the the Bambuti who are its children are completely happy there.

What makes this book such a joy to read is that besides being so lovable, the Bambuti are very funny. Their humor is infectious and irresistable.
Forever after reading The Forest People, everytime you think about the people you met there, and you will think about them, you can't help smiling.

What could be better, especially the way the world is now, than to find a book that makes you really feel good about being a human, proud and happy to be living on the same planet as these wonderful people.

Colin Turnbull romanticizing of the Mbuti pygmies in "The Forest People" is allowable given the period in which it was written. In some ways, the book really tells us more about the ethnographer than the people he studied. Turnbull found the Mbuti way of life to have a simple, spiritual quality that he admired greatly.... part of this admiration stemmed from his own background in an elitist British social and academic system. Turnbull was simply "in love" with the Mbuti.

Anthropology has (hopefully) advanced to the point where its practitioners allow themselves a greater recognition of their possible biases. Even so, who is to say that an understanding of the ethnographer is not more important than the study group.
The book reads pleasantly, if not scientifically.