Best Selling Books by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

“A whole culture is imaginatively and authoritatively illuminated” in this “suspenseful, insightful, poignant” novel of prehistoric times (Publishers Weekly). Twenty thousand years ago, a courageous girl lived in Siberia near Woman Lake, a place you won’t find on any modern map. Only thirteen, Yanan and her companions—hunters of deer, gatherers of roots and twigs—struggle to survive the harsh realities of hunger and cold, bound by an unending cycle of birth, kinship, violence, and death. As Yanan recounts the terrible adventures of her brief life, she departs on spirit journeys that evoke the lives of the animals to which she and her people are intimately linked. A lyrical novel of our species’ prehistory, Reindeer Moon opens up corridors to the imagination that lead us back to the long-forgotten echoes of our distant human past. “Unforgettable . . . Reindeer Moon beautifully resurrects a lost world of merciless magnificence. Dozens of memorable characters live and die in this moving tale, which should become a classic.” —Chicago Tribune Book World “Those familiar with the author’s landmark study, The Harmless People, will not be surprised at the range of anthropological information she brings to her first novel, or at the lucidity of her prose. What will astonish, engross and move readers in her narrative of a group of hunter-gatherers who lived 20,000 years ago is the dramatic immediacy of the story and the depth and range of character development.” —Publishers Weekly

Offering insight into the lives and habits of dogs, wolves, and dingoes, a collection of case stories illustrates basic philosophies for canine happiness and their human-like emotions and relationships.

One of our most influential anthropologists reevaluates her long and illustrious career by returning to her roots—and the roots of life as we know it When Elizabeth Marshall Thomas first arrived in Africa to live among the Kalahari San, or bushmen, it was 1950, she was nineteen years old, and these last surviving hunter-gatherers were living as humans had lived for 15,000 centuries. Thomas wound up writing about their world in a seminal work, The Harmless People (1959). It has never gone out of print. Back then, this was uncharted territory and little was known about our human origins. Today, our beginnings are better understood. And after a lifetime of interest in the bushmen, Thomas has come to see that their lifestyle reveals great, hidden truths about human evolution. As she displayed in her bestseller, The Hidden Life of Dogs, Thomas has a rare gift for giving voice to the voices we don''t usually listen to, and helps us see the path that we have taken in our human journey. In The Old Way, she shows how the skills and customs of the hunter-gatherer share much in common with the survival tactics of our animal predecessors. And since it is "knowledge, not objects, that endure" over time, Thomas vividly brings us to see how linked we are to our origins in the animal kingdom. The Old Way is a rare and remarkable achievement, sure to stir up controversy, and worthy of celebration.

Set in prehistoric Siberia, a “psychologically acute and soaringly imaginative” novel by a New York Times–bestselling author (Publishers Weekly). In this novel by the author of Reindeer Moon, set in the Paleolithic age, Kori lives among his hunter-gatherer people, guilty with the knowledge that his unborn child is being carried by his shaman father’s new wife. Then, Kori impulsively seizes another woman, from a different tribe, after seeing her swimming in a pond—putting his group in danger. He calls the woman Muskrat, and her customs, beliefs, and language are utterly alien to him. And their relationship may bring either joy or bloodshed . . . From an author and anthropologist known for both her fiction and her nonfiction—including the bestsellers The Hidden Life of Dogs and The Tribe of Tiger—this is a compelling tale “likely to appeal to Clan of the Cave Bear fans” (Library Journal).

The groundbreaking, New York Times–bestselling book on canine behavior and how dogs become family from the author of The Hidden Life of Dogs. In the sequel to her New York Times bestseller The Hidden Lives of Dogs, anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas profiles the assortment of canines in her own household to examine how dogs have comfortably adapted to life with their human owners—and with each other. Thomas answers questions we all have about our dogs’ behavior: Do different barks mean different things? What makes a dog difficult to house-train? Why do certain dogs and cats get along so well? How does one of her dogs recognize people he sees only once a year, while another barks at strangers she sees every day? What leads to the formation of packs or groups? As Publishers Weekly raves, “no one writes with greater emotional intelligence about man’s (and woman’s) best friend than Thomas.”

A dog, a goat, and their flock follow the sight and scent of a star in a beautifully illustrated, keenly observed Nativity story. The story begins on a cold upland pasture where coarse grass and scrub cedar grew. The hour was midnight. The day was the first of winter. And the year of our Lord was not 1900 or 1600 or even 100. It was 0. On that night a white goat, Ima, and a huge, gray short-haired sheepdog, Lila, were keeping watch over a small flock of young sheep. Bright and dazzling, a star appears behind the cedars on the eastern skyline. It is big and powerful, and it has a pure, clean scent, like something halfway between honey and water. Lila, the sheepdog, and Ima, the goat, are compelled to follow the star on a journey to a humble manger in Bethlehem, a journey beset with danger, adventure, and love. In a story alive with insight and grace, best-selling author Elizabeth Scott Thomas brings us a striking portrait of the Nativity story from the captivating point of the view of the animal kingdom.

In Dreaming of lions, the author shares stories from her life, from South West Africa (now Namibia) in the 1950s to the Kalahari Desert, where she conducted fieldwork among the Ju/wa Bushmen. Her skills as an observer and a writer put to the test on these and many occasions working with dogs, cats, cougars, deer, and with personal struggles, she has become the author of many books full of insightful observations.

An iconoclast and best-selling author of both nonfiction and fiction, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has spent a lifetime observing, thinking, and writing about the cultures of animals such as lions, wolves, dogs, deer, and humans. In this compulsively readable book, she provides a plainspoken, big-picture look at the commonality of life on our planet, from the littlest microbes to the largest lizards. Inspired by the idea of symbiosis in evolution—that all living things evolve in a series of cooperative relationships—Thomas takes readers on a journey through the progression of life. Along the way she shares the universal likenesses, experiences, and environments of “Gaia’s creatures,” from amoebas in plant soil to the pets we love, from proud primates to Homo sapiens hunter-gatherers on the African savanna. Fervently rejecting “anthropodenial,” the notion that nonhuman life does not share characteristics with humans, Thomas instead shows that paramecia can learn, plants can communicate, humans aren’t really as special as we think we are—and that it doesn’t take a scientist to marvel at the smallest inhabitants of the natural world and their connections to all living things. A unique voice on anthropology and animal behavior, Thomas challenges scientific convention and the jargon that prevents us all from understanding all living things better. This joyfully written book is a fascinating look at the challenges and behaviors shared by creatures from bacteria to larvae to parasitic fungi, a potted hyacinth to the author herself, and all those in between.

A New York Times Notable Book of 1994 Highly respected author, philosopher, and animal trainer Vicki Hearne offers a treasure trove of animal anecdotes, all written in her unique and poetic style. Through entertaining stories about cats, horses, an ornamental carp, a scorpion, and tortoises, Hearne focuses on how each of these various creatures experiences happiness in its own special way. She takes issue with Ludwig Wittgenstein on lions and language, discusses the naming of pets, and considers the process of mourning a loved dog''s death.

The animal kingdom operates by ancient rules, and the deer in our woods and backyards can teach us many of them—but only if we take the time to notice. In the fall of 2007 in southern New Hampshire, the acorn crop failed and the animals who depended on it faced starvation. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas began leaving food in small piles around her farmhouse. Soon she had over thirty deer coming to her fields, and her naturalist''s eye was riveted. How did they know when to come, all together, and why did they sometimes cooperate, sometimes compete? Throughout the next twelve months she observed the local deer families as they fought through a rough winter; bred fawns in the spring; fended off coyotes, a bobcat, a bear, and plenty of hunters; and made it to the next fall when the acorn crop was back to normal. As she hiked through her woods, spotting tree rubbings, deer beds, and deer yards, she discovered a vast hidden world. Deer families are run by their mothers. Local families arrange into a hierarchy. They adopt orphans; they occasionally reject a child; they use complex warnings to signal danger; they mark their territories; they master local microclimates to choose their beds; they send countless coded messages that we can read, if only we know what to look for. Just as she did in her beloved books The Hidden Life of Dogs and Tribe of Tiger, Thomas describes a network of rules that have allowed earth''s species to coexist for millions of years. Most of us have lost touch with these rules, yet they are a deep part of us, from our ancient evolutionary past. The Hidden Life of Deer is a narrative masterpiece and a naturalist''s delight.

More than anything else, this is a book about love. In this deeply moving account, you will hear about Rambo, a sheep who informs the staff when another animal is in trouble; and Paulie, a former cockfighting rooster who eats lunch with humans; Dino, an old toothless pony who survived a fire; and many more. Alongside these horses, roosters, pigs, sheep, rabbits, cows, and other animals is a staff of loving humans for whom every animal life, even that of a frog rushed to the vet for emergency surgery, has merit. Reading this book can profoundly--and joyously--change your life.

The author who revealed the secret lives of dogs in the best-selling The Hidden Life of Dogs offers a journey into the hidden life of cats and reports that cats, surprisingly, are not solitary beings. Reissue.

From the revered author of the bestselling The Hidden Life of Dogs, a witty, engaging, life-affirming account of the joy, strength, and wisdom that comes with age. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has spent a lifetime observing the natural world, chronicling the customs of pre-contact hunter-gatherers and the secret lives of deer and dogs. In this book, the capstone of her long career, Thomas, now eighty-eight, turns her keen eye to her own life. The result is an account of growing old that is at once funny and charming and intimate and profound, both a memoir and a life-affirming map all of us may follow to embrace our later years with grace and dignity. A charmingly intimate account and a broad look at the social and historical traditions related to aging, Growing Old explores a wide range of issues connected with growing older, from stereotypes of the elderly as burdensome to the methods of burial humans have used throughout history to how to deal with a concerned neighbor who assumes you’re buying cat food to eat for dinner. Written with the wit of Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck and the lyrical beauty and serene wisdom of When Breath Becomes Air, Growing Old is an expansive and deeply personal paean to the beauty and the brevity of life that offers understanding for everyone, regardless of age.

Extraordinary new insights into the minds and lives of our fellow creatures from two of the world’s top animal authors, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and Sy Montgomery. A Mail on Sunday “Critic’s Pick” Best Read of the Year “In their writing and in their lives and in their remarkable friendship, Liz and Sy break down false barriers and carry us closer to our fellow creatures.”—from the foreword by Vicki Constantine Croke, author of Elephant Company Tamed and Untamed―a collection of essays penned by two of the world’s most celebrated animal writers, Sy Montgomery and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas―explores the minds, lives, and mysteries of animals as diverse as snails, house cats, hawks, sharks, dogs, lions, and even octopuses. Drawing on stories of animals both wild and domestic, the two authors, also best friends, created this book to put humans back into the animal world. The more we learn about what other animals think and do, they explain, the more we understand ourselves as animals, too. Writes Montgomery, “The list of attributes once thought to be unique to our species―from using tools to waging war―is not only rapidly shrinking, but starting to sound less and less impressive when we compare them with other animals’ powers.” With humor, empathy, and introspection, Montgomery and Thomas look into the lives of all kinds of creatures―from man’s best friend to the great white shark―and examine the ways we connect with our fellow species. Both authors have devoted their lives to sharing the animal kingdom’s magic with others, and their combined wisdom is an indispensable contribution to the field of animal literature.

The Dodoth—a tall, handsome people of the northern tip of Uganda—are a tribe in transition. They are proud, often cruel, warrior herdsmen whose oldest members live just as they did hundreds of years ago, but whose younger members sometimes learn to read and write and have brushed against the modern world. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas accompanied three anthropological expeditions to Africa and lived among the Dodoth. She displays a remarkable ability to communicate with the tribespeople and describe their lives and customs.

«Che cos’è che i cani desiderano più di ogni altra cosa?» Nasce tutto da qui, in fondo, e chiunque ami e viva con un animale lo sa. Questa domanda, apparentemente banale, è all’origine di tutti gli sforzi che noi esseri umani facciamo per comprendere ed educare i nostri animali e – più spesso di quanto ci piaccia pensare – educarci a stare con loro. Insomma, che cos’è che vogliono, i nostri cani, gatti, pappagalli eccetera? Qualcuno lo sa? La risposta è qui, nelle pagine di un illuminante classico dell’etologia. Un libro senza tempo che è il testo di riferimento per chiunque abbia un amico a quattro zampe. L’etologa Elizabeth Marshall Thomas ha osservato i suoi cani per oltre trent’anni, dando loro riparo, cibo, acqua e cure, ma lasciandoli liberi di assecondare i propri istinti. Seguendoli nei loro lunghi vagabondaggi ha spiato pensieri ed emozioni, imparando a conoscerli e a riconoscere le antiche leggi cui obbediscono. Un’attentissima osservazione che ha portato alla pubblicazione dei due bestseller La vita segreta dei cani e La vita sociale dei cani, entrambi amatissimi in tutto il mondo con milioni di copie vendute. Ora, per la prima volta, Longanesi li riunisce in un unico volume, una guida completa, ricca di episodi buffi, illuminanti e commoventi, preziosa per chiunque voglia riuscire a interpretare il comportamento e i pensieri del proprio amico a quattro zampe. Con una prefazione inedita di Monica Pais, la veterinaria-scrittrice che salva gli animali randagi nella sua clinica di Oristano.

Het leven van een jong meisje in Siberië in de IJstijd.

A l''instar des romans de Jean Auel, voici un récit préhistorique élaboré par une anthropologue de profession. Situé dans la Sibérie d''il y a 20000 ans, il est narré par l''esprit de la jeune fille qui porta le nom du titre.

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