One of the most widely read authors on anthropology and animals wild and domestic, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has observed dogs, cats, elephants, and human animals during her half-century-long career, all of which was inspired by her lengthy trips to Africa as a young woman. Her many books include Dreaming of Lions, The Hidden Life of Dogs, The Social Lives of Dogs, The Tribe of Tiger, The Old Way, and The Hidden Life of Deer. She lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
Library Journal- "Naturalist Thomas (The Harmless People)
transports readers into animal culture and behavior in this new
version of her 2013 memoir A Million Years with You. The
author travels to Africa, where she joins her parents in observing
the indigenous tribes of the Kalahari Bushmen; Uganda, where she
witnesses the brutality of former president Idi Amin; and New
Hampshire. Looking back at her journeys in the Kalahari Desert in
the early 1950s, Thomas beautifully describes her surroundings and
the early connections she made with the wildlife. She also notes
her observations of human interactions and how situations are
different based on gender or status. She recalls stories of
humility, learning and growing from others’ experiences, recounting
her youth through adult life, and engages with the reader in
joy and sorrow, which creates a deep connection that leaves you
feeling like an old friend. VERDICT: This educational and
heartwarming book is a suggested purchase.”
Booklist- "'Since a choice between God and dinosaurs seemed
unavoidable, I decided to believe in dinosaurs.’ Thus, the youthful
Thomas (The Hidden Life of Deer, 2009) set her feet firmly on the
path to biology. Beginning with what she learned in the New
Hampshire woods, the author and naturalist slowly absorbed what
science she could, but the fateful decision by her engineer father
to take the entire family to the Kalahari gave her the lens through
which she saw the world. Thomas reflects on her being forced to
major in English in college, then her first several books (in
anthropology, as people were considered more appropriate to study
than animals). She talks of dark times: her recurring alcoholism,
both her children’s serious accidents, and her husband’s ALS. But
she also writes of the joy of discovery, of following a streetwise
dog to see what he did all day, of studying elephant communication,
and of getting to know local deer. Thomas has had a wonderfully
eclectic life, thanks to her fascination with animals, writing, and
the anthropology of the everyday.”
Shelf Awareness- "From an early age, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has
been enthralled with the natural world and she shares her keen
observations from a lifetime of study in her memoir Dreaming of
Lions. She carefully intertwines memories of her African
experiences as her family followed the ways of the local Bushmen,
or Ju/wasi, who lived near various waterholes in the Kalahari, with
her adult life in the U.S. with her husband and children, their own
journeys to Africa and their interactions with the Dodoth tribes.
On these later trips, she encountered elephants and lions,
hostility for being a woman and the violence of Idi Amin's regime.
Thomas deliberately doesn't follow a timeline as she tells
her life's story, grouping by subject matter and themes rather than
chronologically, which gives readers an interesting perspective on
how this woman's creative mind works. From microscopic
waterbears living in a drop of swamp water to the leopards that
prowled next to her as she slept near a waterhole to the cougar
that killed a doe in her yard, Thomas shares her awe of nature with
readers, providing insight into the ways of animals that is
obtained only after years of careful scrutiny. Candid revelations
about her own struggles with alcohol and the medical traumas
endured by her family round out this undeniably powerful narrative
of life that is reminiscent of The Flame Trees of
Thika and Out of Africa.
Kirkus Reviews- "A novelist and bestselling nonfiction writer's
account of her life and how she became a respected observer of the
natural world. Thomas (The Hidden Life of Deer: Lessons from the
Natural World, 2009, etc.) grew up a city girl in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, not far from Harvard's Museum of Comparative
Zoology. From her engineer father, she came to love the wonders of
the sky, and from her anthropologist mother, she learned that all
creatures 'were on earth to be cared for.’ Direct experience with
nature came from weekends and summers spent in rural New Hampshire.
But thanks to the observational skills her parents encouraged her
to hone, Thomas also learned about nature while watching the
family's cats and dogs. As a teenager, she traveled with her
parents to the Kalahari to study the Ju/wasi people where she
learned about 'the rules that evolution set out for each species.'
Though she longed to study biology in college, Thomas majored in
English instead in part to prepare to be an articulate 1950s wife
able to 'enhance her husband.' Even as she fulfilled social
expectations for marriage and motherhood, her experience with
anthropological fieldwork brought brilliant opportunities for
research. A Guggenheim fellowship allowed Thomas to study the
Dodoth people of Uganda. Later, the New Yorker gave her funds to
travel to Nigeria, where her research into tribal life was
interrupted by the start of a devastating civil war. Yet the good
fortune and privilege that also allowed her to study lions in
Namibia and wolves on Baffin Island did not render her immune from
the vagaries of life. The author also battled alcoholism and
contended with tragedies that left her daughter paralyzed and her
son with a brain injury. Both wise and witty, Thomas' book
celebrates nature as the best tonic for the ‘poison' that
inevitably infiltrates even the most comfortable of human lives. A
candid and humane memoir of a fascinating life.”
"We are lucky to have shared some time on Earth with Elizabeth
Marshall Thomas. Like a shaman of words, she connects us as if by
magic with other worlds hidden on our own planet. And she is the
last best writer to have deeply witnessed with her own eyes the
people at the cradle of humanity. Reading her is like looking
through a telescope and realizing that the brightness you see
actually happened long, long ago, and has taken all this time to
reach your own eyes.”--Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words:
What Animals Think and Feel
"Dreaming of Lions is as mesmerizing as its title. It's filled
with lions, elephants, hyenas, and wolves; hunter-gatherers, tribal
shamans, and African despots; death-defying escapes, dazzling
victories, and personal struggles—and always-glorious prose.
Staggeringly original and bluntly honest, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
has written a book about a life lived fearlessly and fiercely—a
life that not only forever changed the way we view other
peoples but also transformed the way we understand the rest of
animate creation."--Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an
Octopus and The Good Good Pig
"Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's affirming, finely observed memoir
recounts a life in the process of being fully and unapologetically
lived; a gift from someone with an endlessly curious mind and more
than eight decades on the planet. But perhaps the greatest gift of
Dreaming of Lions is Marshall Thomas's signal talent: it
leaves the reader feeling far less alone in the world, and much
more deeply connected to it.”--Alexandra Fuller, author
of Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness
"It would be a gross understatement to say that Dreaming of
Lions is a stunning book. Thomas is confronted by Idi Amin in
Uganda; she digs roots with women gatherers in the Kalahari. In
Ibadan, Nigeria, she witnesses tribal violence, religious
sacrifice, and resistance to western medicine. She is a keen
observer of lions, hyenas, and wild wolves. All this is interwoven
with her own personal history to form a memoir of extraordinary
power.”--Maxine Kumin, author of Where I Live, and former
United States Poet Laureate
"Elizabeth Marshall Thomas writes with all her sense of a lifelong
love affair with our planet and its astonishing life. She is a
meticulous observer of human diversity and the hidden ways of
animals, responding with empathy and reminding us to look with
wonder.”--Mary Catherine Bateson, author of Composing a
Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom
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