Rating: 
Summary: AMAZING
Review: I could write an enormous review, but I want to keep it very simple.
Just read the book!
The most intriguing part is when Ishi walked out of nowhere into "civilization".
AWESOME, AMAZING, GREAT, WONDERFUL.
Rating:
Summary: AMAZING
Review: I could write an enormous review, but I want to keep it very simple.
Just read the book!
The most intriguing part is when Ishi walked out of nowhere into "civilization".
AWESOME, AMAZING, GREAT, WONDERFUL.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful, tragic book
Review: I've read this excellent book three times now, and each time it is rewarding. My family has vacationed near the area where Ishi walked out of the woods, and his story became even more real and more tragic to me when I saw the beautiful land that his people lost. Kroeber has provided an important last glimpse of a Native American living in the old way. In addition to the obvious issue of our decimation of indigenous peoples, the book also raises important questions about the treatment given Ishi when he came to live in white culture.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful, tragic book
Review: Imagine this: it's the 20th century, we have electricity, movies, telephones, trains, cars, the latest audio recording devices, indoor plumbing, and access to the usual luxuries and amenities of our western world. Then one day - here in the United States, out of our own country - a man appears out of the wilderness, almost magically transferred from the stone age to the steel age. Truth is said to be stranger than fiction, and the story of Ishi is one such example. Ishi was the last of the Yahi Indians, living in Northern California under a cloak of fear, secrecy, and evasion from white men, carrying on this lifestyle for the better part of four decades. In this thoroughly researched book, Theodora Kroeber tells Ishi's story. She covers the historical and geographical background of the Yahi Indians, how their lives began to change and their numbers decimated with the coming of the caucasions in the mid- 19th century, and how Ishi and the few remaining people of his tribe lived until Ishi was the last one left. She then tells us about the man himself, the last (happy) five years of his life in San Francisco, and the adjustments and learning Ishi went through in his new home. The author does a superb job of comparing and contrasting Ishi's stone age world with the steel age world, without the tedious prose often involved in such writing. This book is highly readable and strongly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Best book I've read this year
Review: Imagine this: it's the 20th century, we have electricity, movies, telephones, trains, cars, the latest audio recording devices, indoor plumbing, and access to the usual luxuries and amenities of our western world. Then one day - here in the United States, out of our own country - a man appears out of the wilderness, almost magically transferred from the stone age to the steel age. Truth is said to be stranger than fiction, and the story of Ishi is one such example. Ishi was the last of the Yahi Indians, living in Northern California under a cloak of fear, secrecy, and evasion from white men, carrying on this lifestyle for the better part of four decades. In this thoroughly researched book, Theodora Kroeber tells Ishi's story. She covers the historical and geographical background of the Yahi Indians, how their lives began to change and their numbers decimated with the coming of the caucasions in the mid- 19th century, and how Ishi and the few remaining people of his tribe lived until Ishi was the last one left. She then tells us about the man himself, the last (happy) five years of his life in San Francisco, and the adjustments and learning Ishi went through in his new home. The author does a superb job of comparing and contrasting Ishi's stone age world with the steel age world, without the tedious prose often involved in such writing. This book is highly readable and strongly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Inspirational Tale of Overcoming Limitations
Review: Of all the books that I have read about Native Americans, this one gave me the most personal picture of day to day, non-warfare life. It also provides an intimate glimpse of how Ishi thought and felt, about himself, about others, about the world. Although Ishi's story is tragically sad, and his death seemingly premature and ironic, his resilience and optimism are an inspiration. Despite the incredible hardships of his life, he apparently entered the foreign world of white California without harboring any deep resentment or even bitterness. I found his enthusiasm to be both incomprehensible and very moving, which served to temper the sadness of his story. In the end, I was left with a more positive than negative aftertaste, in contrast to other books about Native Americans which tend to focus heavily on issues of injustice, warfare, humiliation, etc. While all those negative themes are undercurrents to Ishi's story, the way in which he coped with his trying life is the most fascinating aspect of the book. In fact, the only negative thing I would say about this book is that a large portion of the beginning is dedicated to historical background about Ishi's tribe, and I felt anxious to read the more personal accounts of Ishi the man. However, this background information is clearly necessary to understand Ishi's life, and is written as colorfully (but acurately) as possible. Even though the historical details are researched (and referenced) carefully, this does not read like an academic text. This book left me feeling that if Ishi, a man accustomed to living in verdant tranquility, could find peace living in a bustling city, then he should serve as an inspiration for everyone struggling to cope with the hectic pace of modern life.
Rating:
Summary: The last free Native American in California
Review: This book is one of two I routinely give to people who move to northern California. The other one is The Ohlone Way, by Malcolm Margolin. Ishi was the lone survivor of a doomed tribe of Yahi Indians on the slopes of Mt. Lassen. Other members of his tribe were murdered by a planned campaign of genocide during the settling of the West. When Ishi stumbled out of the hills of his birth in 1911, he landed in the 20th Century, huddled in the corner of a cattle corral on a ranch, dressed in rags, starving, desperately lonely, and probably certain he would be killed. Instead, a wise sheriff in Oroville called on some anthropologists from Univ of CA in Berkeley, and Ishi eventually came under the benevolent but somewhat demeaning (he was made the centerpiece of a museum exhibit) protection of Alfred Kroeber. It is Kroeber's wife who wrote this touching, heartwarming, illuminating and ultimately tragic history of Ishi's life in the 'modern' world.
Most moving for me was a long middle section that recounted a magical summer when Ishi took Kroeber and his teenage son back to Mt. Lassen and showed them his native territory. They lived together as unspoiled and free Native Americans for the summer, hunting deer, swimming in cold streams, living in huts and caves, building fires, making bows and arrows... An experience that was destined never to be repeated.
Wonderful archival photographs supplement the imminently readable text.
Don't miss this very special and quintessentially Californian piece of history. But there's no rush: this book is destined to remain in print forever.
Rating:
Summary: excellent book
Review: This book tells a true story of a common science fiction theme, How would a Stone Age person acclimate himself to modern civilization, if suddenly transported there. Ishi was the last remnant of a California hunter-gatherer tribe. He was starving and near death when discovered by a California rancher. Thus began his journey from primitive beginnings, to journalistic sensation, to scientific curiosity, and finally as a working member of society in the California of the 1920's. and `30's. As the subject of scientific study, Ishi shows that basically people everywhere and for all time are the same, but it is the differences that of course makes it interesting. One example is that at first anthropologists thought Ishi could not count above the number ten. It was later found that he saw no reason to count abstractly. He had a numbering system that extended quite high when physical objects were present. One of the most shocking revelations for Ishi, were not the buildings, cars, trains or machinery of modern life, but the number of people that existed. This is a man who had never seen a crowd of people, he had watched his remote lingering tribe-members die off when he was a child . A hunter-gather lifestyle can only support a sparse population. From Ishi's perspective the largest crowd and perhaps the world consisted of those fifty tribe members when he was a young boy. The book gives a humorous account of Ishi's shock of seeing a crowded San Francisco Beach on a hot summer day. The book is very well written, an easy read and very entertaining. It is surprising that this book is not more popular.
Rating:
Summary: excellent book
Review: This book tells a true story of a common science fiction theme, How would a Stone Age person acclimate himself to modern civilization, if suddenly transported there. Ishi was the last remnant of a California hunter-gatherer tribe. He was starving and near death when discovered by a California rancher. Thus began his journey from primitive beginnings, to journalistic sensation, to scientific curiosity, and finally as a working member of society in the California of the 1920's. and '30's. As the subject of scientific study, Ishi shows that basically people everywhere and for all time are the same, but it is the differences that of course makes it interesting. One example is that at first anthropologists thought Ishi could not count above the number ten. It was later found that he saw no reason to count abstractly. He had a numbering system that extended quite high when physical objects were present. One of the most shocking revelations for Ishi, were not the buildings, cars, trains or machinery of modern life, but the number of people that existed. This is a man who had never seen a crowd of people, he had watched his remote lingering tribe-members die off when he was a child . A hunter-gather lifestyle can only support a sparse population. From Ishi's perspective the largest crowd and perhaps the world consisted of those fifty tribe members when he was a young boy. The book gives a humorous account of Ishi's shock of seeing a crowded San Francisco Beach on a hot summer day. The book is very well written, an easy read and very entertaining. It is surprising that this book is not more popular.
Rating:
Summary: This book will make you more human
Review: This is an incredibly well-written account of a solemn, sad, stone age man, calling himself Ishi, who wandered one day out of the forest into 20th century California civilization. For background information -- the author, Theodora Kroeber, was the wife of one of the men privileged to be Ishi's friends, Alfred Kroeber. Dr. Alfred Kroeber was a very important American anthropologist early in this century -- a student of Franz Boas, and a parent, with Theodora, of the writer Ursula K. (for Kroeber) LeGuin. Theodora Kroeber, at any rate, was in an excellent position to tell Ishi's story from the inside, and she does a fantastic job of it. Perhaps it's significant that this, the most impactful account of Ishi, was written NOT by an anthropologist, but by an anthropologist's wife. She was able to think simply as a non-"objective" fellow human being, and she talks about Ishi with great warmth and sympathy. Think for a moment of what it might be like to be wholly unacquainted with even the rudest, most fundamental elements of civilization, and to need to fit in. Ishi met this challenge, in his own time, and in his own way. You will never forget his story. I would just like to add, very quickly, that even today Ishi's story is sometimes lived out anew. In Massachusetts, several public schools have taken in students from tiny villages in the Sudan. These students are learning for the first time in their lives of such things as writing, money, and shoes. Stairs, of all things, are very confusing to some of them. I don't even want to think about what they make of such overwhelmingly powerful modern developments as the atom bomb, shopping malls, or Britney Spears. Ishi's story is timeless, yet timely for all who choose to ponder it. This book is amazing. One billion thumbs up.
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