Rating: 
Summary: Dr. Grinker, does this count as class participation?
Review: I admit I had to buy this book for class. But it's easiliest one of the most interesting "textbooks" I've ever had to read. It presents a balanced, intense examination of Turnbull's life, from England to India (the most interesting part, I thought) to Africa. The best way to read this book would be in conjunction with Turnbull's own "The Forest People" and "The Mountain People," to get a more complete picture of his life with the Mbuti and the Ik. (And if you read this, Dr. Grinker, I'm kidding about the class participation. Mostly.)
Rating: 
Summary: Curiosity Satiated
Review: I have been curious about Colin Turnbull ever since I read the "Mountain People" several years ago. As an anthropology student, I identified with Turnbull's willingness to "learn" the lifeways of the "other", and in doing so, reshape his own worldview. I am afraid that this book may have told me a little more than I wanted to know however...
Turnbull's relationship with Joseph Towles is a critical part of the story, and I appreciate and acknowledge that. I had to wonder exactly how the biographer knew the very intimate gastroenterological details that were included in the text. It is just a matter of personal taste, but that is the only reason that I did not give the book a complete five star rating. The book does give us a much needed, intimate portrait of an important anthropologist and human being.
Rating:
Summary: Curiosity Satiated
Review: I have been curious about Colin Turnbull ever since I read the "Mountain People" several years ago. As an anthropology student, I identified with Turnbull's willingness to "learn" the lifeways of the "other", and in doing so, reshape his own worldview. I am afraid that this book may have told me a little more than I wanted to know however...
Turnbull's relationship with Joseph Towles is a critical part of the story, and I appreciate and acknowledge that. I had to wonder exactly how the biographer knew the very intimate gastroenterological details that were included in the text. It is just a matter of personal taste, but that is the only reason that I did not give the book a complete five star rating. The book does give us a much needed, intimate portrait of an important anthropologist and human being.
Rating: 
Summary: Turnbull's life
Review: I listened to Dr. Turnbull lecture in West Virginia when I was 19-21 years old in the early eighties in my hometown. At that time I found him an inspiration. He was able to communicate such respect for life, how different people live it and to provide an insight into the beauty of the peoples he had studied. When I saw this book I was delighted because, of course, I was hoping to feel that person I came to know somehow communicated in the text. Broadly I felt the author did not know him, wasn't inspired by him, was fixated on homosexuality in a manner that seemed unlike his subject. At times I "learned "things.Too much, it's like Elie Weisel said one does not always need to know every single detail and often that defames the purpose and meaning-denegrates the memory. In the end I was left feeling life was brutal and disillusioning and a horror in many respects. I think the man I sat down and spoke to years ago, who gave such inspirational lectures, would never have left you this way.This is not a love story , it's a horror story about failed love and man's degredations. In this way I found the book an oddity. I suppose Dr. Turnbull was accused of operation with rose colored specs, but in a sense a teacher deals with the human spirit and he was a very elavating person. Dr. Faini brought him to our world in school , and his love of music and percussion and world instrumentation was so obviously connected to Dr. Turnbull. I prefer to leave my memories intact and hope that the book is seen to be written by a person who wanted to debunk and didn't really know him anyhow. Perhaps he wrote his first draft and published it.
Rating:
Summary: A family story
Review: I was gratified that Dr. Grinker wrote this book because Colin Turnbull was my cousin, and I knew almost nothing about him. I echo the postive comments by the other reviewers, but what made the book special for me were the references to his family and his relations with them. Dr. Grinker does a wonderful job of not bringing his personal feelings about Colin's work, his homosexuality, or his relationship with Joe Towles into the book. Grinker does, however, give a wonderful sense of Colin and Colin's take on life. One doesn't have to be interested in either anthropology or homosexuality to like this book; it is, simply put, an excellent study of an all-too-human man.
Rating:
Summary: A family story
Review: Quite naturally biographers are frequently drawn to understand some famous person's contribution to history or the world of ideas and letters. Such stories inevitably involve that famous person rubbing shoulders with some other famous person and we lucky readers gain insights into a world we thought we had already known. Grinker's biography of Colin Turnbull takes an entirely different tack. He tells the story of an apparently second rate anthropologist -- if he was an anthropologist at all -- but a character of the first order. And through his incredibly rich life, we are introduced to, among other things, English boarding school, Indian ashrams, the world of the Pygmies and other African peoples, death row, academic intrigue, and a bizarre relationship with his true love. Grinker spins the tale deftly and is a delightful tour guide through the life of a man who had an uncommon zest for adventure and a passion for the world.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific Biography About Turnbull
Review: This is a terrific biography about a fascinating 20th century mind: Colin Turnbull. What a life Turnbull had from academia to ashrams, Africian culture to the African queen, homoerotic british school boys to the emergence of the gay bar scene in 1960's New York, the devastation of WW II to the devastation of HIV, and above all a profound love story. Richard Grinker does a marvelous job of recreating the personal life of one of the centuries great intellects. This is a fascinating work on so many levels. It traces the development of an important new contribution ot the study of man while keeping the reader step by step in touch with the man who added a humanistic and compassionate insight to the field of Anthropology. Mr. Grinker lends his considerable psychological and anthropological insight to helping the reader understand who and what this great man was. I strongly recommend this book to any reader who wants a gripping read about an extraordinary 20th century intellect who ultimately transcends all of his great achievements through love. Five stars to Mr. Grinker.
Rating: 
Summary: informative yet rather strange
Review: This is an informative biography, no question on that, but one wonders what the relationship was between the author, Roy Grinker, and his subject, Colin Turnbull. Both did doctorates in anthropology at Harvard, and both studied the same peoples in Africa (does getting a PhD in anthropology absolutely necessitate studying pygmies in Afriac? sure seems like it...). From what I've read in other sources, Grinker turned his back on Turnbull's "approach" to pygmie culture, only to regret this after Turnbull's death. One wonders whether or not this book is a too-late tribute to the author's academic father-figure.
Rating:
Summary: An Inspiring Love Story For All
Review: This is such a captivating love story that the issue of whether the subject is gay is not the essence of the passion. I admit that I do love biographies, and it is amazing how many informative details are contained in this adventure, which was Colin Turnbull's fascinating life. Colin Turnbull came in contact with so many varied people. Nonetheless, the story is hard to put down, as it moves so seamlessly from one experience to the next. Although I knew nothing about the Mbuti, the Ik, nor the steps to be taken to become a Buddhist monk before this exposure, Turnbull's affection for these cultures serves as a fascinating introduction. Like the Bushman story Colin loved to tell, it seems that this man should be content with a life well spent. Unlike most biographies, the reader is left inspired to follow one's own life passions to seek similar satisfaction.
Rating:
Summary: A Window to Other Worlds
Review: This was the best read I've had in years. The story of Turnbull's life, as Grinker tells it, is a page-turner but also leaves you with much to contemplate. It was, for me, a window into worlds I've always wanted to travel to but know I'm not likely to visit. Turnbull, born in England to a life of privilege, was passionate and iconoclastic as both a man and an anthropologist. He lived among the Mbuti Pygmies of the African rain forest, whom he romanticized, as well as the starving and aggressive mountain people of Uganda known as the Ik, whom he reviled. The African parts of the story would be reason enough to read this book but there's so much more - Turnbull's early experiences in the world of the English boarding school, with its sometimes brutal homosexuality; his life in a Hindu ashram in India under the tutelage of a famous female guru; museum politics and academic infighting in America; the theatre world of Peter Brooks, who dramatized Turnbull's book on the Ik; redneck homophobic Virginia, where Turnbull and his long-term companion made their home; anti-death penalty advocacy; ordination as a Buddhist monk by the Dalai Lama; and death by AIDS. Perhaps most important, Turnbull was also a gay man totally devoted to - in fact obsessed with - his partner of thirty years, Joseph Towles, whom he sought to protect and mentor and whom he idealized in the same way he idealized the Pygmies. What makes the book hang together is the cohesive psychological portrait of Turnbull. Reacting to the cold isolation of his advantaged childhood, Turnbull was a seeker of goodness and beauty with an overwhelming need to find those qualities among the disenfranchised or less privileged and then to become one with them. This need allowed him to see the positive essence of other people(s) but it also blinded him to unpleasant truths about those he idealized. His strengths as a person and as an anthropologist, in other words, were also his weaknesses. Ultimately, it is only because of the psychological insight Grinker brings to this biography that we can begin to understand the otherwise incomprehensible pull that the generally unimpressive and often unappealing Towles had on the larger-than-life Turnbull. All this without leaving your armchair!
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