Warrior Herdsmen

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas writes with clarity and a lyrical eye about her immersion in the strange world of the cattle-herding Dodoth, far from her East-coast American roots. She proves herself a humane and unshockable witness to the life of these warrior herdsmen, dissecting their poignant relationship with their cattle, and watching as they sacrifice prized animals to avert raids from the neighbouring Turkana tribe and search the entrails for clues about forthcoming attacks. She records the escalating violence between the tribes, as the new nation states of Uganda and Kenya are drawn in to police the ancient clan frontiers.



From a very young age, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas was taken to watch wildlife in the woods of New Hampshire. Later, her entire family went to study the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert, which led to the publication of her first book, The Harmless People. The book brought Elizabeth to the attention of William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker magazine, who commissioned her to write about the Dodoth of Uganda. Warrior Herdsmen was first published as a series of articles by the magazine. Later, Marshall Thomas turned her attention back to her early love, animals. She is best known now for her work on the lives of dogs and wolves, books which show her extraordinary observational persistence. Her writing bristles with the unexpected and the surprising, observations which seem utterly fresh, yet resound with a profound sense of truth.