Description

Funk & Wagnalls Co. [Published Date: 1957]. Hard cover, 246 pp. First Edition (with a "1" on the copyright page). Acceptable+ in Acceptable dust jacket. Red cloth covered boards with gold skull on front and gold lettering on spine. Light bumping, scuffing and soiling to edges of covers. There is a thin crack to the spine between the last page and the rear free end-paper but binding is still solid. Light spotting to edges of text block and light overall aging to pages but pages are otherwise clean and unmarked. Dust jacket has a 1" tear with some chipping at the top of the spine and several other smaller chips and tears along edges. Light overall scuffing and soiling to jacket as well and some sticker residue on inside of front flap. NOT price clipped ($3.95). Now in an archival-quality (removable) Brodart Cover. NOT Ex-Library. NO remainder marks. Includes an 8 page section with black and white photog reproductions. [From jacket flaps] Harry B. Wright has traveled among witch doctors and sorcerers. He has lived with them; and he understands them - not as a scientific researcher probing academically into their practices and theories, but as an explorer and an adventurer. What is a witch doctor - in terms of our own more or less civilized concepts? He is an intellectual who lives by his wits; he is sometimes a social misfit, sometimes a physical weakling, a cripple, or an epileptic; he is an adviser, a consultant, a master of mass psychology, a politician and a showman, and he usually possesses powers of a kind which are beyond what we generally regard as normal. He goes by many names. In Africa he is a ju-ju man in the Niger country, a b'unga among the cannibals of the Fang nations, on the Slave Coast a gree-gree doctor, and in the Gabun country a ngombo. In South America he is a curandeiro and sometimes a feiteceiro. In Malaya he is a mendug, in Borneo a dukun . . . among the Eskimos an angakok. But in all these widely separated places he is the "doctor" of the village. He is greatly feared and respected; and he is sometimes evil.... As a curious and roving observer, Harry Wright has gone from the headwaters of the Maranon and the Amazon to the jungles of New Guinea and the villages of the ancient Slave Coast of Africa. He has witnessed the strange rites of the "Taro Cult" in Papua; the "Jackal dance" of the Bapende in the Belgian Congo; the weird workings of the "Vivala madness" in Dutch New Guinea; and the almost incredible evidence of extra-sensory perception and communication among the primitive peoples of these continents. Oriented by his own scientific training, and writing from his own eye - witness experiences, Dr. Wright, an outstanding member of the Explorers' Club, has compiled fascinating material about one of the world's most baffling mysteries - the almost occult powers of the practitioners of witchcraft, sorcery, and "black magic."