Reviews for Leakeys: A Biography (Greenwood Biographies Series)

The average rating for Leakeys: A Biography (Greenwood Biographies Series) based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-02-07 00:00:00 John E. Mcmahon Boston Blueblood Klix in Stix Creating a spoiled brat with a friendly outward manner, Patrick T. Lowell Putnam's mom never told him "no". The scion of two famous New England families, he limped through Harvard as expected, shot off to New Guinea for a year, and then wound up joining an anthropological expedition to the Belgian Congo. It was 1927 and he had no apparent skills unless you count "Having the Best Connections" as a skill. A flamboyant and non-conformist sort, Putnam found his true home in the northeastern corner of the then Belgian colony, in the Ituri Forest, home to the BaMbuti, or as they've been called for several thousand years, the Pygmies. He shacked up with three or more different African women, defied his family (but still got an income), got involved with health care, export of "forest products", jungle rubber production, animal studies, tourism, and vague gestures towards anthropology. He also, over twenty five years of mostly living in an idyllic corner of the forest, married three American women and brought them back to the Congo. The first died of pneumonia while visiting the US, the second split, and the third outlived him, but was abused and rejected as Putnam sank into terminal emphysema and mental illness. A dilettante who tried his hand at numerous things and was good at many of them, a charmer who held the attention of everyone who met him, P.T.L. Putnam never really accomplished much. He was one of those Westerners who fled their own societies for a remote corner of the world, where they could escape from social control, family responsibilities, and standard jobs, lording it over people who could not say "no". For a while he ran a lodge or inn along a remote stretch of the only road in the huge forest. Reporters, writers, and adventurers came and went. He kept okapi, chimpanzees, and many other forest animals. He came to know the local BaMbuti (pygmies) very well but never wrote down any of his knowledge. He spoke several African languages, tried to get better pay and conditions for African workers, decried colonialism, but could never see that his entire existence was one of "White Privilege" (a term that had not been invented). The BaMbuti liked him---or did they just find him useful? He was a man who would be king, but who wore the crown uneasily and intermittently. Paying no attention to medical advice, he fell ill often. Two years before he died in 1953, aged 49, a young ethnomusicologist visited him. This was a Scot named Colin Turnbull. Fascinated by the life at Putnam's camp and by the BaMbuti, Turnbull turned to standard anthropology, eventually returning several times, and finally writing "The Forest People", one of the finest ethnographies you'll ever read. I read it half a century ago. Introducing Turnbull to the Forest People was probably the most lasting effect of Putnam's 25 years in the Land of the Pygmies. This is a fascinating character study which willy-nilly points out the demeaning effects of colonialism on all. It is NOT about the BaMbuti.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-01-09 00:00:00 Lisa Gianakos This is a very good book about a very unusual man. Joan Mark is a good writer and well informed on the subject. It's fairly easy reading and spell binding.