Name: The Serpent and the Rainbow
Price: 382.00 ZAR
Availability: InStock
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)
Author: Wade Davis
ISBN: 9780684839295

Type

Physical Book

Author

Wade Davis

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Language

English

Pages

304

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

21.8 x 14.0 x 1.9 cm

Weight

0.29 kg.

ISBN

0684839296

ISBN13

9780684839295

Synopsis "The Serpent and the Rainbow "

A scientific investigation and personal adventure story about zombis and the voudoun culture of Haiti by a Harvard scientist. In April 1982, ethnobotanist Wade Davis arrived in Haiti to investigate two documented cases of zombis--people who had reappeared in Haitian society years after they had been officially declared dead and had been buried. Drawn into a netherworld of rituals and celebrations, Davis penetrated the vodoun mystique deeply enough to place zombification in its proper context within vodoun culture. In the course of his investigation, Davis came to realize that the story of vodoun is the history of Haiti--from the African origins of its people to the successful Haitian independence movement, down to the present day, where vodoun culture is, in effect, the government of Haiti's countryside. The Serpent and the Rainbow combines anthropological investigation with a remarkable personal adventure to illuminate and finally explain a phenomenon that has long fascinated Americans.

Wade Davis

(Author)

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(Vancouver, 1953) is a professor of Anthropology and holds the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. He studied Anthropology and Biology at Harvard University, where he also received his PhD in Ethnobotany. From 1999 to 2013, he was a Resident Explorer at the National Geographic Society. He is the author of more than twenty books, including The River (1996), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1997), Shadows in the Sun (1998), The Rainforest (1998), The Clouded Leopard (1998), and The Guardians of Ancient Wisdom (2009), and in 2012 he won the “Samuel Johnson” Prize for his book Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest. He has also developed a prolific audiovisual career, highlighted by the eight-hour documentary series Light at the Edge of the World, written and produced for the National Geographic Society. Davis has received eleven honorary degrees, as well as the Gold Medal of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in 2009, and from Harvard University the Explorers Medal (2011), the “David Fairchild” Medal for botanical explorations (2012), and the Centenary Medal (2015). Since 2016, he is a Member of the Order of Canada and in 2017 received the “Sir Christopher Ondaatje” Medal for Exploration.

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