Alex ShoumatoffBesprekingen

La seconda parte del titolo originale (... Sojourns in the Greater Southwest) rende molto di piu’ l’idea di cio’ che tratta questo libro; mentre la prima parte (Legends of the American Deserts), utilizzata anche nella traduzione italiana, puo’ attrarre il lettore, ma non completa i temi trattati da Shoumatoff.

Alcuni brani:

A quel punto avevo viaggiato cosi’ tanto che nulla mi sembrava esotico. Avevo capito che nessun modello sociale e’ privo di aspetti venali. Potremmo dire che avevo incontrato l’Altro, e l’Altro ero io. (16)

Cio’ che Lawrence (D.H.) ammirava negli indiani era il fatto che la loro fosse la “religione piu’ antica”, che egli definiva come “l’autentico slancio vitale …, il desiderio … di stabilire un contatto diretto, nudo, senza un mediatore o un intermediario … con la vita elementare del cosmo, la vita della montagna, la vita della nuvola, la vita del tuono, la vita dell’aria, la vita della terra, la vita del sole”. (22)

Per molte tribu’ californiane la Via Lattea e’ formata dalla polvere scagliata in cielo durante una gara di corsa fra Coyote e Lince. (77)

“Noi nativi (Navajo) tentiamo di rimanere in armonia con l’insieme della creazione, - prosegui’. - Se violi le leggi naturali del vento, della pioggia, del fulmine, dei rettili, questo finira’ col ripercuotersi negativamente su di te. …” (118)

“Certa gente non e’ poi cosi’ felice che Colombo abbia scoperto quello che oggi chiamiamo America”, diceva John di Big Mountain. (144)

Shoumatoff distruttore di miti:
Ma per pochi elementi del mito di Alamo sono storicamente accertati. Davy Crockett, per esempio, non indosso’ mai un cappello di pelliccia di procione; inoltre, secondo studi recent, si nascose sotto un letto nel corso della battaglia e, ben lontano dal volersi battere fino alla morte, tento’ di arrendersi. (333)

Il filo spinato segno’ la fine delle forme di vita nomadi: bisonti, antilopi, indiani e guide.Fraziono’ gli spazi illimitati che avevano costituito l’essenza della frontiera. Ora la Madre Terra era divisa in particelle in costante diminuzione, che gli anglos si illudevano di possedere. (348)

… il sombrero a tesa larga per proteggere gli occhi dal sole abbagliante, il bandana per difendere il naso e la bocca dalla polvere, i chaparajos (o chaps, copricalzoni di pelle) contro i rovi, gli stivali a punta adatti a essere infilati nelle staffe, gli speroni con le stelle di cinque centimetri; la realta (o lariat) per prendere gli animali al lazo, la sella col pomo per assicurare la corda (molto diversa da quella usata dagli inglesi), la cavezza (o jaquima) senza morso metallico. (361)

La prima cosa che mi colpi’ ad Albuquerque, dove le case e gli alberi sono bassi e poco invadenti, fu il cielo, la visibilita’ non ostacolata, che ribattezzai Vasta Vista. Come molti prima di me, dopo averci fatto l’abitudine, scoprii che lo spazio aperto, la luce, i colori del cielo e della terra spoglia ed esposta alle intemperie avevano un effetto meravigliosamente tranquillizzante e terapeutico. Attivavano i recessi contemplativi del cervello: erano il dono piu’ speciale del Sudovest. (442)

Gli indiani hanno un senso della natura superiore a quello dei bianchi, … La accettano e la usano, anche se non la possono spiegare. Salgono sulle montagne e si siedono a guardare gli dei che camminano fra gli alberi. (476)

An interesting hodgepodge of a book, apparently pulled together from magazine articles and other short pieces. Alex Shoumatoff is like a rambling dinner guest who can be fascinating at one moment, tedious at another. Like such guests he over stays his welcome, but at his departure he leaves a favorable impression.

Alex Shoumatoff's book is a bargain. Even if I had paid the listed hardcover price for The Wasting of Borneo it would still have been a steal. Here is a wealth of information and insight about how the environment is being destroyed. There is no reason to doubt Shoumatoff's contention that few people know anything about eradication of Borneo's rain forestry. It is happening just so trees can be grown for their palm oil.

This book details facts about nature which you probably did not know. You probably never knew elephants will instinctively move to higher ground if a tsunami is headed their way. What about the fact that an elephant's trunk contains over 50-thousand different muscles? It was fascinating to learn of the acacia tree emitting a putrid odor when giraffes eat too much vegetation. The giraffe in turn moves upwind to eat from the tree that is not producing the odor.

We are so caught up in everyday conveniences that most of us pay scant notice to stories as important as what's happening in Borneo. The author, who subtitles his book Dispatches from a Vanishing World, went to that part of the world with a friend he has known since childhood to capture the story. He points out that the deforestation can ultimately be blamed on our consumption of palm oil. His hope is that a palm oil alternative is found.

Full disclosure: I received the book free. I was an early reviewer of The Wasting of Borneo, thanks to Library Thing.

This is a striking work, chronicling one man's journey toward connecting to the natural world and his attempts to not just understand vanishing cultures and worlds, but help to document and save them. From the stories of his first connecting to animals and the forests around his childhood home, on to experiences in Borneo, Shoumatoff paints the natural world and its inhabitants with careful and elegant strokes, offering attention to details that few people might have noticed. As a whole, the book is a call to arms for cultural and biological diversity, and a lovesong to Borneo that echoes provocatively, if sadly, from its pages.

If the book has a downfall, it's that the title and the jacket suggest that the whole of the work is focused on Borneo, whereas only the last two thirds of the book is really centered there. As a reader, I found myself anxious to get to that portion of the book, having not expected the slow and more personal build-up; by the time I was really enjoying the beginning, in fact, the book was moving on to Borneo. As a result, I almost wish this had been a few separate works, or that I'd better known what I was walking into. Perhaps even that the second portion of the book had been quite a bit longer, and more lingering. Now that I've finished, this last impulse may be the strongest--moments were given such depth, and I think I might have liked more depth to the larger picture, or a more sustained idea of his journey in Borneo, instead of the narrative given here which so often felt fragmented, and outside of time or linear progression.

Still, for readers interested in vanishing cultures or in careful memoirs and narratives that focus on appreciation for the natural world, I'd certainly recommend Shoumatoff's work. It had moments where it was slow, but on the whole, it was a gorgeous glimpse into places I've never visited and given too little thought to. I look forward to reading more of Shoumatoff's work, and to looking up some of those works he mentioned in the writing of this one.

I very much enjoyed the first half of this book, in which Shoumatoff meditates on the wonders of a childhood spent outdoors. The writing sparkles so much that it took me forever to get through, because I kept putting it down to go enjoy the woods myself. That is effective writing indeed! The sections on human-animal communication are more whimsical than scientific, but perhaps if more people had that sense of wonder, they'd be less cavalier about spending their waking hours going from screen to screen to screen to big-box store to screen to bed.

Ironically, sections where Shoumatoff describes his travels in the vanishing natural world—ie, the reason this book was written—are by far the weakest. Shoumatoff has a fantasy of the idyllic, pristine, pre-modern Eden that he will let nothing, and I mean nothing, alter. This includes multiple conversations with Penan indigenous peoples whose words are rendered in “me speak good” pigdin English (except when he forgets) and one particularly cringe-worth passage when he slobbers over “the most authentic looling Penan we've met yet.” (The other Penan you met were what? Imposters? These are human beings, not mummers playing roles for your ecotourism adventure.) He laments how the Penan are not passing down their traditional tales--suket--but fails to notice that the only two he relates revolve around women being murdered by their husbands or sons, which kinda puts lie to his claim that gender-based violence is an outside importation.

Shoumatoff's blind spots don't end there. In this book alone, he travels to Brazil, Canada, the Cayman Islands, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dubai, Greece, Jamaica, somewhere in the Kalahari, Madagascar, Mali, Mexico, Peru, Rwanda, Switzerland, Thailand, Uganda, Zaire, and Zimbabwe--many of these locations multiple times--to say nothing of repeatedly crisscrossing the US in a matter of days. That's some carbon footprint you've got there, ecocrusader!

Of course, he'd likely say it's an unfortunate but unavoidable downside to his life's work of bringing attention to global environmental degradation. A critic might say that's a nice-sounding way to justify his globe-trotting adventure tourism. It's no different than Shoumatoff criticizing governments for prioritizing economic gain over conservation; they say they're raising living standards, he says it's all excuses. And this the book's Achilles' heel, and one Shoumatoff's either too unwilling or too imperceptive to address. When it comes to the environment, everyone believes their actions are justified and altruistic, that the other guy is prioritizing his own selfish needs over the health of the planet, and should therefore stop what he's doing first. Meanwhile, climate change and environmental degredation continue apace.

Bottom line: it's worth checking out this volume for its lyrical opening chapters, but the latter sections—and the weight of Shoumatoff's message—could have done with a lot more introspection and nuance. My sense is that this message, with this author, would have been better served in essay form.

The collection of stories was fascinating, though it seemed to get a little lost toward the end of the book. The writing was great and the focus on individuals' personal stories as they related to the ecological conflict was more engaging than a simple explanation of the problems would have been. I did find the writer's AR leanings distracting at times. Overall would recommend as an up-close look at how the palm oil industry is destroying wildlife and indigenous peoples' way of life.

I found “The Wasting of Borneo, Dispatches from a Vanishing World” a fascinating read. It is so sad that we do not look ahead to see the effect on other humans, animals and our environment in the quest for things that we believe we need. Do we really need palm oil? Is it really that healthy? Certainly not enough to destroy land, animals and cultures! The only criticism I have is that I would have liked a few maps to help visualize the before and after effects of the plantations on the land.

I expected this book to be more about Borneo. At its heart this was a book of nature essays about various regions with the longest narrative being about Borneo. I lost interest early on as Shoumatoff's voice didn't do it for me. Probably appropriate for people who generally like nature writing that is animal-heavy, but it wasn't for me. I wouldn't read his other work based on this book.½

I truly enjoyed this book. It starts with his childhood and the love of nature that was nurtured in him by his family. It mirrored my childhood although I didn't travel any where near as much as he did. I too was able to visit the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines and was able to view the bonobos and had previously read about many of the animal sanctuaries he mentioned so I felt right at home in the book. Bottom line is we are destroying our earth and the wealth of animals who inhabit it.

Environmental commentary on the destruction of the rainforest in Sarawak on Borneo. Broad scope of book: personal memoir of childhood travels, ecosystem being disrupted, animals loss of their habitats, and a tribe being displaced. Unclear what our response is to be. Boycott palm oil? Surely there is more we can do.

Review: The Wasting Of Borneo by Alex Shoumatoff. 02/20/2017

Alex Shoumatoff is a pronounce naturalist speaking out to protect the endangered rainforest of Borneo Island. This is an interesting book about the dangers of Borneo’s
rainforest, people, animals, and the diverse ecosystem being overlooked. The most endangered tribal people on earth, the Penan are fighting for their right to exist along with the orangutan, and other life forms, who habitat the rainforest of Borneo Island. Shoumatoff has become an author and journalists traveling the world to write about places, animals, people, and cultures that are in danger. In his own words he writes what binds humans to animals, and nature in the environment of the rainforest and the palm-oil crises but not how to protect the biodiversity that effects us all.

The Penan tribe have been living in the Borneo rainforest for thousands of years but now the lowland of the rainforest has been logged and burnt to make way for a vast palm-oil plantation. All over the world the rainforest are being cleared for one product or another. Palm-oil is being consumed by many countries. Next time you pick up a bar of soap, a bottle of shampoo, toothpaste, or spooning peanut butter from a jar think of how many animals and people who are being deprived of their home and food. However, also think about the workers on the plantation and loggers who need to feed their families….

Shoumatoff’s book covered his personal travel journey with a childhood friend which I thought was interesting but I feel the author could have used some of the space and time for more information on the crisis of losing a vast part of the rainforest of Borneo Island and other rainforest around the world. The book was well written and kept my interest but I felt like I didn’t have enough thought provoking issues or opinions to make a judgment of concern.

I feel there’s two sides to a story of this magnitude. There’s the tribal people and the animals of the rainforest which is alarming and also there are the plantation and loggers income to consider for raising their families and the issue of the vast world of consumers who need this product. There could be a sensible answer if you were an activist on either side. The author could have collected some information regarding both issues. It’s going to take more then this book to come up with opinions, advise, comments, rationality, and answers which I don’t feel the author gave any data for either side…. However, the issue was worth reading about….

THE WASTING OF BORNEO: DISPATCHES FROM A VANISHING WORLD by Alex Shoumatoff. This book was sent to me by Beacon Press in exchange for an unbiased and honest review. The exchange was sponsored by LibraryThing’s Early Review program.
Alex Shoumatoff has been a staff writer for The New Yorker and a contributing writer for Vanity Fair, Conde’ Nast, Esquire, Travel & Leisure and Onearth. He has written several books and developed a website - Dispatches from the vanishing world - to raise consciousness about the disappearance of biocultural diversity.
The book includes an Introduction; Four Parts; Acknowledgements and Notes. (The Notes section is an excellent resource.)
Part I - The education of an animist (background and early experiences of Mr. Shoumatoff)
Part II - Wonder Wanderings (excellent interviews and related experiences with people working with animals and plants)
Part III - Learning from the animals (fascinating interviews and conversations with people working with animals)
Part IV - Vanishing Edens (travel to Sarawak and reflections on vanishing ecosystems)

Mr. Shoumatoff is traveling to Sarawak - a region of Borneo - with his childhood best friend Davie Holderness, who he hasn’t seen in 55 years. But before he describes and reflects on this journey to one of the most challenged ecosystems in the world, we journey through Mr. Shoumatoff’s childhood experiences in Bedford Village, New York and his adult travels, writings, interviews and experiences which led him to his ‘education as an animist”. (He describes himself as an animist. Animism is “a way of being alive to the communications and connections that are constantly going on between all living things - human, animal, plant.”) This trip to Borneo in 2013 is where he sadly and eloquently speaks of this last vanishing Eden with its peoples, its animals and its plants.
In Part II, he travels to the King Ranch in the Brazilian state of Para’ where the rain forest is decimated so as to convert forest to pasture for cattle. He was on a hill surrounded by “miles and miles of thick, black smoke pouring into the sky as far as I could see”. Another fire in the Amazon was reported to be “bigger than Belgium”. Mr. Shoumatoff saw this (and other experiences) as “becoming the mission of my writing: to evoke the beauty and fascination and preciousness of what is being laid waste to in a way that the reader starts to care and maybe even wants to do something about it”.
An extremely personal, reflective and informative book, a lengthy list includes many of the topics discussed in this book - botany, zoology, anthropology, cultural anthropology, psychology (human and animal), myth, religion, animism, economics, politics, greed, corruption, conservation, forestry, deforestation, agriculture, ecology, physical geography, culture, language, biocultural diversity, animal behavior. Whew! I’m out of breath. Reading this book is a very interesting educational experience.
Some highlights for me were:
p. 57 - 5 main causes of the destruction of our plant and animal life
p. 64 - contagious empathy among humans, animals and plants (absolutely fascinating)
p. 68 - Gandhi’s observation that “one measure of the morality of a society is how it treats its animals.”
p. 69 - Temple Grandin and her amazing brain
p. 107 - dipterocarp species
p. 109 - tragedy of Sarawak’s deforestation
p. 111 - early migration to Borneo
p. 130 - animal stories/myths. “The Penans’ Suket (myths) explain why the world is the way it is, how its animals and plants came into being, the Penans’ place in it, and how they are supposed to behave.”
p. 169 - the latest on the battle for Borneo
pp. 179-184 - Notes Section
website - Dispatches from the Vanishing World

My only critique of THE WASTING OF BORNEO is that there are no maps. I read most sections with an atlas at my side. Geography (physical geography, cultural geography, political geography) is an integral part of this book.

I recommend that you read this book. Please.
It is fascinating, reflective, educational, distressing, emotional and important.

Alex Shoumatoff has certainly had an illustrious career. He has published several books, written hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, and traveled to some of the farthest reaches of the planet, places where normal people such as myself may never get to see. It isn’t the inability to get on a plane and fly to Venezuela that’s stopping us; no, it’s the fact that these Eden-like, natural sanctuaries are disappearing rapidly. The rainforests of Borneo are disintegrating in the wake of consumer culture’s demand for palm oil, and this atrocity is something that Shoumatoff attempts to explicate for readers in his newest book, The Wasting of Borneo. However, that mission isn’t fully accomplished.

As I previously mentioned, Shoumatoff is an accomplished individual. A quick Google search, or even reading the back cover of The Wasting of Borneo, will alert anyone to the fact that this is a man who doesn’t need to introduce himself. Yet, the first two parts of the book do exactly this. Instead of jumping straight to the point, we endure several long, stream-of-consciousness, dreamlike narrations about romanticized memories from Shoumatoff’s childhood, including those that helped to establish his animism and spiritual-like connection with nature. This material might be useful in some regard, as it helps to establish Shoumatoff’s motivations and credentials, as well as Davie’s character and relation to our storyteller, but the first 40 or so pages seem better suited for an autobiography. In a book that promises to be shocking and descriptive of the injustice occurring in Borneo, the point is not met very quickly. One moment we are in Shoumatoff’s childhood, and in the next we are observing a conversation between Davie and Shoumatoff before they arrive in Borneo. It’s almost as if Shoumatoff is shouting, “Hey! Listen to all these things I’ve done that make me the perfect person to write this book! Never mind Borneo; we’ll get to that after I tell you my life story.”

The book’s disjointed start doesn’t completely fail, however; in fact, there are several poignant moments in which Shoumatoff considers how the Edens of his childhood have disappeared, that never-before-seen species are dying by our far-away hand, removed from the horrifying reality of deforestation. When we finally reach Part 4, where Shoumatoff recounts his experience in Borneo, we find a heart-wrenching account of the tragic beauty of these forests. We find true emotion, true pain felt for these microcosms at risk, and true dedication on the part of the author to spreading the word and protecting nature. “Humanity is overrunning the planet like a virus,” he says. “But voices for the animals and planets and the indigenous subsistence cultures that evolved with them and are part of the same ecosystem are needed even more desperately.” Shoumatoff steps in to be that voice for the victims of the palm oil craze; he just loses a few readers in the process.

The Wasting of Borneo takes the travel narrative and fuses it with an elegy for a world we will soon be without and Alex's Shoumatoff's bildungsroman from childhood to Borneo. That is to say, the book, while ostensibly about the plight of Borneo is more about how we can develop our connection with nature, about the possibilities of being, and a multiplicity of mindsets set against the backdrop of place. This is a book about people and our world. We are, in our interconnected world, able to access a deluge about the horrific tragedy imposed upon the planet, but very little of it gives us any pause to reflect, to develop a response besides mild outrage before we go about our day. Shoumatoff's narrative offers glimpses into developing a perspective to this tragedy that helps move beyond the shock.

Like so many readers, I was unaware of the majority of what Alex Shoumatoff wrote about in his book, "The Wasting of Borneo." We all have heard rumblings of why palm oil is bad to purchase, but I personally did not really know why. Now I do; and will be a whole lot more careful in how, what I consume. So I applaud the author for working to bring this to the Western awareness. Overall, I really enjoyed this book, however, it wanders and wanders prior to getting to Borneo. I do not think those wanderings are bad, and in fact, I learned a LOT about the state of animal/human relationships (and lack thereof - at our peril), but it is not solely a book about Borneo. I always wonder how I can help, and this book does give some ideas on where, how, in what ways, we can help. There is a mountain of misinformation and protesting of the wrong entities and such; so this was great. Mr. Shoumatoff's writing style is very pragmatic, honest and impartial. His reporting of the indigenous cultures was the most candid I have ever read: it's not an utopia, nor does every culture have a higher respect and/or relationship with animals and nature ... but some do, and the preservation of their way of life (and the forests that support them) are important too. Overall, very educational and important. Highly recommended.½

Palm oil. Oh, horrible palm oil.

I'm not being flippant. It's bad. It's a struggle today to do the right thing for the planet and for future generations, but even though I'm beginning to see why ignorance might truly be bliss, it's important to strive to gain an understanding of how our actions (or inactions) impact the world.

Alex Shoumatoff's book does a good job. I was already aware of the problems with some other crops, like soy. But my knowledge of palm oil production was almost non-existent.

Although Shoumatoff bounces to stories about where he grew up, I don't think they're out of place. He grew up in Bedford, New York - a far cry from Borneo. But it's important to try to get people to connect, to understand what's happening and to do that, you need to give them something they can connect to. Talking about a place they're unlikely to ever visit makes connection difficult. Giving them perspective, having them think about how much nature has disappeared in their own backyards and then translating that to a place half a world away creates that link.

Shoumatoff gets that. He's a talented writer who weaves an engaging story. He's amicable, educated and empathetic, all qualities the world needs more of now. The story he tells isn't a happy story, but he puts the best possible face on it while drawing attention to a critical problem, the destruction of another piece of the world's heritage.

Like many other reviewers have noted, it takes a little bit of work to finally reach Borneo for a book entitled "The Wasting of Borneo." I am not familiar with Alex Shoumatoff and his work, so I was somewhat put off by the introduction being a recounting of his childhood. I was really looking more for a natural history lesson on the forests of Borneo and the environmental impact of the industry that has begun to take over in the region. I did not feel like the second-half of the book (which I preferred) was too fact heavy and it did a good job of presenting the impacts of the palm kernel oil industry on both wildlife and indigenous peoples. Shoumatoff is obviously passionate about his work and I think that it could easily inspire others.

This was the first of Alex Shoumatoff's books I've read. Part travelogue, part biography, and part environmentalist commentary, I found "The Wasting of Borneo" quite compelling. That being said, it was not what I expected. Only the second half or the book focuses on Borneo. The first half relates prior experiences with nature and indigenous groups - an interesting subject in its own right, but somewhat disconcerting if you're not expecting it. It's well worth reading, and gives a better idea of how the author's own viewpoint evolved. While I wish he spent more time exploring the complex relationships between nature, commerce, and environmentalism in Borneo, I found this book both informative and enjoyable.

I liked the first half, but the second reads like a textbook. I learned a lot reading this. From what I heard of the ruin of the forests in Borneo, I thought it was just the wildlife suffering. I didn't know there were indigenous people being affected as well.

I was put off initially because it did not dive into the promised topic right away. The author is a long experienced nature journalist. I picked this book because of its content, I hadn't even heard of the author. So it turned me off when the beginning was more about him than the promised topic.

It starts with an introduction to the author's childhood experiences in the forests surrounding his childhood home and introduces his childhood friend who explored with him. He describes the beginning of his career as a journalist and explorer. He next moves on to a handful of short trips he made to different conservation efforts/wild animal sanctuaries across the US. I found it interesting that a few of these stops were at places with slightly controversial backgrounds - where you can pay to touch an elephant for example. As a true journalist he marks his words vs. whomever he interviews in a straightforward manner. He defends most of the places he visits. The more of the book I read the more I came to like it. If you are looking for a book that helps you establish a sense of place with the natural world the first portion of the book is excellent - but not related directly to Borneo yet. At around page 75 we are finally in Borneo.

In Borneo we learn a little bit about efforts to preserve the Orangutans and the impact the palm oil industry has on those efforts. The rest of the book shifts gears and describes his stay with the semi nomadic Penan people of Borneo. The author, a photographer, and close friend stay with them for about two weeks and learn about their culture and experiences with the loggers and palm oil plantation owners. It is through them that he most gets his message across that these industries are destroying the environment of Borneo as well as taking away these people’s rights to continue to live off the forest as they have done for thousands of years as small nomadic groups. He shares how a group leader and an activist who defend the forest have been found dead or have disappeared. He effectively brings to light the hardships and brutality of what is going on in Borneo. He also shares statistics about the species richness in the area and the changes in that richness. I see one person felt the second half read like a textbook which I strongly disagree with. The second half read as much like a journal as the beginning half. It was just more focused on one topic.

My message to those who picked up this book eager to learn about Borneo is:

A. It is worth pushing through Alex's childhood and reflection because it does actually help you make connections.

B. If you want to dive directly into Borneo go to around page 75.

Overall, I learned a handful of things through this book. The destruction going on in Borneo is unacceptable; consumers should limit their use of palm oil. While some companies are trying to find sustainable methods of harvesting palm oil their definition of sustainable is up to questioning. I felt that I finished the book to finish it though as I was not hooked on the author’s narrative. I would still recommend the book and have already shared it with a friend.½

Couldn't get through it. Too much like a textbook and too much about the author's life before he went to Borneo. Could have been interesting if he were a better writer.

A rambling account of Borneo, rather like your dear old uncle in the nursing home you visited as a child. He had good tales, but rambled around and went from idea to idea in a stream of consciousness kind of way. It is interesting, but also tiresome after a while.
Alex Shoumatoff mainly writes about palm oil tree farming in Borneo, and how it adversely affects the rain forest and the lives of indigenous people like the Penan. His writing goes from the origin of music to religion to forest stories, and wanders all around as he descends on these people and writes about anything that attracts his interest. In the meanwhile, he uses flashbacks and accounts of his travels in other areas to fill out his story.
The book needs better editing and revision to bring it all into focus, but I can also see the appeal to people who like travel books that wander, too. Like many writers in foreign places, people who agree with the writer are wise and clever. Those who disagree are greedy and unscrupulous. Anyone who slights him has an ulterior motive, which of course, cannot be that the writer may simply be unlikable to people who disagree with him.
The writer talks about taking some interesting sounding photographs of some of the people and places he visited, but they were not in the galley proof edition, nor were any maps which would be useful. Also there was no glossary, although the writer uses some very obscure words and a number of native words and concepts.
A good book to have the bathroom for short readings. Also for armchair tourists who like enviro-literature.

This is the first book I’ve read by Alex Shoumatoff, a journalist with at least 10 books to his credit who seems to have spent most of his adult life traveling the world to report on environmental problems for a variety of magazines (his 1986 article for Vanity Fair about Dian Fossey’s murder was made into the movie “Gorillas in the Mist”).

The Wasting of Borneo is apparently Shoumatoff’s first book in 20 years. Though the title of the book gives the impression that it covers the destruction of Borneo’s rain forests, that’s not entirely accurate. The book does begin in Borneo, but it quickly turns into an autobiography, backtracking to upstate New York in the 1950s to cover Shoumatoff’s childhood relationship with his local forest. The second part of the book describes Shoumatoff’s life and wanderings through the mid-1980s, and the third part describes Shoumatoff’s interactions with, and learnings from, various animals around the world, experiences that converted him into a self-described “agnostic animist.” Shoumatoff doesn’t bring his readers back to Borneo until part four of his book.

While the first three parts of Shoumatoff’s book are well-written and interesting, they likely aren’t what readers who pick up this book based upon its title and cover-photo are either expecting or want. At least they weren’t what I expected or wanted. But they don’t comprise the bulk of the book and they do give readers a better understanding of Shoumatoff’s background and experiences that inform his current views and efforts.

It is the fourth part of Shoumatoff’s book that finally gives readers what the cover of the book promises. And it’s no let-down. Shoumatoff presents a frightening summary (on both the micro- and macro- level) of what is going on in Borneo, and elsewhere, where short-term profits for the few are far more important than the preservation of the environment, existing flora and fauna, or the lives, or lifestyles, of native peoples. Shoumatoff loudly warns of the havoc wrought by our world’s addition to cheap palm oil in particular, and to exotic woods to a lesser degree. It is a testament to Shoumatoff’s journalistic skills that he makes his readers care about events occurring on the other side of the world, in a place few will ever visit.

Shoumatoff’s book informed me and made me more aware of my role, small though it may be, in making the world a worse place. It has made me pay more attention to my unknowing use of products that are produced through the destruction of rain forests, species, and ways of life that may never recover. I hope more people will read this book and modify their purchases to help ensure that at least some of the damage done to date will be undone, to the extent possible, before it becomes too late.

This book comprises four stories: "The Woman Who Loved Gorillas," The Last of the Dog-Headed Men, The Emperor Who Ate His People and In Search of the Source of AIDS.

A fascinating book about the way people think about ancestry, kinship and themselves. This has a great deal with the words they use to name relationships, and Shoumatoff focuses heavily on language. The book is much more than a language book, however. Also, it is beautifully written.