Co-Winner of the 2003 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing, Society for Humanistic Anthropology and American Anthropological Association Honorable Mention for the 2004 Sharon Stephens First Book Prize, American Ethnological Society One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2003 "A new classic of the Amazon... In a sweeping panorama of the history of the Amazon ... Raffles impresses with his ... Read moreenormous scholarship and lyrical language... [T]he range of Raffles's knowledge is exquisitely broad. What we thought we knew of the Amazon and the reasons for its devastation will forever be changed by this rapturous soliloquy on the region."
Choice "[It draws] upon a range of literature not typical of Amazonian studies. Specialists and general readers will appreciate the scope."
Stephen Nugent, Journal of Latin American Studies "A central challenge in studies of the Amazon region is apprehending its social and natural diversity. This book is amongst the most readable and penetrating analyses we have... The tension between being in a place and always on the move, between dissolution and creation, are ambiguities this book manages to capture with deftness and subtlety. It would have been enough to write about this in one locality, but to have done so connecting up various places and people, and across time transforms the argument into a major achievement."
Mark Harris, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Show Less