Description
Alfred A. Knopf, Published 1959. Hardcover, ix, 266 pp.; 22 cm; First Edition; illustrated with 16 leaves of black-and-white photographic plates, two kinship charts and a double-page map.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition with a Good dust jacket. Yellow cloth boards, orange illustration on front, orange decoration and dark green title panel on spine, Borzoi device on rear. Mild shelf and edge wear, light bumping to edges. Binding tight. Small spot at top of front pastedown, mirrored on front free endpaper; otherwise pages clean and unmarked. Illustrated dust jacket by Bill English in magenta and olive. 1-inch by 1/2-inch chip to spine panel, 3/4-inch tear along top edge of front panel, several other smaller chips and tears and creasing along edges. Mild shelf wear with some color loss along edges, fading to spine panel, mild overall toning and some spotting to rear panel. Price clipped. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. First book by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, drawn from the journal she kept on her family's expeditions to the Kalahari in the 1950s, made under the auspices of the Peabody Museum of Harvard with her father Laurence K. Marshall, her mother, the anthropologist Lorna Marshall, and her brother, the filmmaker John Marshall. An account of the Bushmen of South-West Africa and Bechuanaland (the !Kung and the Gikwe) and the desert in which they lived: gathering veld food, the tsama melon as the source of water in the drought, kinship, songs, the medicine dance, and portraits of Toma the leader, Short Kwi the hunter, and Beautiful Ungka and Lazy Kwi. Jacket blurbs by Rachel Carson, Carleton S. Coon, Oliver La Farge and Earl Parker Hanson. This is the original text; Vintage issued a revised edition in 1989. Typography and binding based on designs by W. A. Dwiggins. Contents: The Desert; The Road; The Bushmen; The Fire; Gai and Ukwane; Veld Food; Mood Songs; The Dancers; Peoples of the Veld and Sky; Beautiful Ungka and Lazy Kwi; Toma the Leader; The Grove; Short Kwi the Hunter; The Sun Dance; The Medicine Bees.