Savages

Rating:
Summary: This is one of the best books I've ever read.
Review: Joe Kane's perspective is extraordinarily balanced. His approach to the complex realities is balanced, despite his biases. His account is compelling and unforgettable. At the end I sensed how delicate the Huaroni's and other indigenous tribe's existence is, with sadness. And yet his final words contain hope. Kane poses the most hard-hitting questions to the right people and summarizes this difficult picture with succinct and near poetic sentences.

Rating:
Summary: What is a Savage?
Review: Joe Kane, author of best selling 'Running the Amazon', has tackled a subject often thought of as being the job of anthropologists and the like. As a reporter, Kane has done a good job of relaying details such as the environment the Huaorani live in and the details of the oil industry that looms over their part of the Ecuadorian Amazon. As mentioned in another review, the anthropological insite Kane offers in response to Huaorani culture and how it has changed and adapted to its situation leaves something to be desired. That said, I do not find this to be a problem. Kane is writing for an audience that would probably find most anthropological scholarly texts dry and unintersting, but he has managed to explain the conflict that has arisen due to oil exploitation in the rainforest, all the while demonstrating the effects this exploitation has on humans in the area. I wa spleased to see that Kane demonstrated how the Huaorani have formed a sort of resistance to the destruction of the environment they call home by using conduits provided by external political groups, thus demonstrating how the marginalized make themselves known. The book is engagingly written and Kane, while unable to hide his anti-corporate and anti-oil exploitation sentiments (with which I agree), has made a worthy case for the halting of oil exploitation at the level it was (and still is) being carried on in the Amazon.

Rating:
Summary: What is a Savage?
Review: Joe Kane, author of best selling 'Running the Amazon', has tackled a subject often thought of as being the job of anthropologists and the like. As a reporter, Kane has done a good job of relaying details such as the environment the Huaorani live in and the details of the oil industry that looms over their part of the Ecuadorian Amazon. As mentioned in another review, the anthropological insite Kane offers in response to Huaorani culture and how it has changed and adapted to its situation leaves something to be desired. That said, I do not find this to be a problem. Kane is writing for an audience that would probably find most anthropological scholarly texts dry and unintersting, but he has managed to explain the conflict that has arisen due to oil exploitation in the rainforest, all the while demonstrating the effects this exploitation has on humans in the area. I wa spleased to see that Kane demonstrated how the Huaorani have formed a sort of resistance to the destruction of the environment they call home by using conduits provided by external political groups, thus demonstrating how the marginalized make themselves known. The book is engagingly written and Kane, while unable to hide his anti-corporate and anti-oil exploitation sentiments (with which I agree), has made a worthy case for the halting of oil exploitation at the level it was (and still is) being carried on in the Amazon.

Rating:
Summary: A good memoir.
Review: June 18, 2002

This is a well written book, but not an inclusive
piece of research. The author writes of his
experiences in South America with skill and passion,
but a reader should come to the story with the full
knowledge that he is reading the work of an interested
observer and not that of an anthropologist, or
sociologist, or even much of an activist.

Still, I'd recommend this book to someone who wouldn't
normally be interested in the subject matter. It's a

pleasurable and moving read. Author Joe Kane seems
more interested in the people he met during his travels
than in cleansing or condemning his various subjects.
Persons truly interested in the puzzle that is big oil,
bad politics and embattled natives in South America,
however, will probably finish `Savages' with as many
questions as answers.

Rating:
Summary: A good memoir.
Review: June 18, 2002

This is a well written book, but not an inclusive
piece of research. The author writes of his
experiences in South America with skill and passion,
but a reader should come to the story with the full
knowledge that he is reading the work of an interested
observer and not that of an anthropologist, or
sociologist, or even much of an activist.

Still, I'd recommend this book to someone who wouldn't
normally be interested in the subject matter. It's a

pleasurable and moving read. Author Joe Kane seems
more interested in the people he met during his travels
than in cleansing or condemning his various subjects.
Persons truly interested in the puzzle that is big oil,
bad politics and embattled natives in South America,
however, will probably finish 'Savages' with as many
questions as answers.

Rating:
Summary: Great humour, deep sympathy and lots of action
Review: Kane gives a very sympathetic yet never condoning view of a people that comes an incredible long way to take up the challenge of the most powerful industries in the world: the oil industry! The author relates his experiences with great humour reflecting one of the most outstanding characteristics of the Huaorani: they seem to be able to lough a lot inspite of it all! A most touching yet also entertaining book.

Rating:
Summary: Who is the savage here?
Review: Kane seems to think there is some irony in titling his book "Savages", but instead it adds to the racist overtones found in his faux anthropological approach to his "field work". The oversimplifications found in this book are upsetting to those of us who spend years working with native populations, and this book does little to halt harmful visions of native peoples. This is an ecotourist approach to a complex culture and we are left with more questions than answers, and this book in many ways capitalizes on the plight of these people.

Rating:
Summary: Savages would have benefited from the use of anthropology
Review: One of my professors used this book in an anthropology graduate seminar at Berkeley to examine the concept of field work, and the types of knowledge that field work imparts. We found this book to be very instructive in the values and practice of journalists as our society's "instant experts" as opposed to anthropologists who spend decades studying the cultures they write about. We were all struck by how little time Kane actually spent conducting fieldwork, how absorbed he was with himself, and we were shocked to see what little regard he gave to actually learning the language of the people he claimed to be so interested in studying. This book can teach readers quite a bit about how journalists study the world, and should not be confused with the field of anthropology (as the book's jacket blurbs would have it).

I do not wish to be overly harsh with this book for it does inform general readers of some important developmental issues facing indigenous peoples the world over. The information gathered outside of the field setting does present vital data on the travesties of the petroleum industry (though the author does ignore an embarrassing amount of published anthropological work on the Huaorani). This is the book's strength, but the degree to which it exoticizes the Huaorani (even given Kane's attempt at irony in naming his book) as (noble) Savages overly simplifies a complex situation, as deadline pressed journalists often do.

Rating:
Summary: A book that will open your eyes...
Review: Savages is not the kind of story you read and promptly forget about. While living in Ecuador, I borrowed the book from a friend and was shocked how Texaco and other companies are destroying the Ecuadorian rainforests, polluting the land, and obliterating indigeneous tribes and cultures. If you want to read a book that will open your eyes to reality, read Joe Kane's book.

Rating:
Summary: Objective, humorous, touching, and excellent journalism
Review: This book will crush your preconcieved notion of the "savages".Joe Kane does a supperb job of presenting the story of the clash between the Huaorani and the American and South AmericanOil Companies in a territory the size of Massachusetts but with an unequalled abundance of wild life and vegetation.One of those books you will not want to put down. Expect a fascinating journalistic adventure (not propaganda) !