Name: Affluence Without Abundance
ISBN: 9781632865724

James Suzman

Old times -- The rewards of hard work -- The mother hill -- A beachside brawl -- The settlers -- Living in the moment -- Tsumkwe Road -- The provident environment -- The hollow tree -- Strong food -- An elephant hunt -- Pinnacle point -- A gift from God -- Hunting and empathy -- Insulting the meat -- New times -- When lions become dangerous -- Fear and farming -- Cattle country -- Crazy gods -- The promised land

What We Can Learn from the World's Most Successful Civilisation

Affluence Without Abundance

Andrew John Kinney

Other reviewers have noted that the author meanders more than a little in making his points. This is a shame, because the San people are interesting in many ways; they are perhaps the original people of Africa, and hence of homo sapiens since research shows they have lived in Namibia for over 200,000 years. Their traditional diet and way of life is a window into how all humans once lived. But there is far too much academic discussion that does not contribute, in my opinion, to telling the story of the San. Also, because I had already read a good bit about the San, this book was not a revelation in the way that it apparently was to some reviewers.

*** July 1, 2020 ***

I am returning to and revising my opinion of this book, two years on from my first reading of it. I often find myself thinking of the stories of the San that Suzman shared, and of the accounting of their hunter-gatherer diet that he documented before those traditions mostly disappeared. The fact that this book has stayed with me in ways that made me think often of it and the San people means that I judged it too harshly the first time around.

Affluence Without Abundance What We Can Learn from the World's Most Successful Civilisation

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