Dreaming of Lions

January 15, 2016
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.

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March 15, 2016

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.--Meghan Dowell, Beloit Coll., WI

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2016
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)