Review
"In this unusual and important study, the author brings the so-called 'pygmies' or hunters-gatherers out of the margins of precolonial African history and centers them as critical actors. She terms them 'forest-specialists,' thus highlighting the skills that allowed them over centuries to sustain dynamic relations with expanding agriculturalists until, she argues, the Atlantic trade undermined the basis of the relationship. This is a significant study not only for regional specialists but for all who seek to integrate early African societies into their teaching." - Phyllis M. Martin Ruth N. Halls Professor of History, Indiana University

"This book is profoundly original and marks a significant advance beyond even Vansina's Paths in the Rainforest in both substance and in its epistemology of thinking historically about one of the last (formerly) 'dark' corners of the continent's past. Klieman's book, beyond its careful and methodologically very clear integration of wide-ranging archaeological, linguistic, ethnographic evidence, is yet another strong confirmation of the maturation of history in Africa, and the still-unplumbed potential of its earlier eras." - Joseph C. Miller University of Virginia

Book Description
Covering more than 2,000 years this important region's history, this book is a groundbreaking contribution to the knowledge of pre-colonial Africa. It is the first historical work to reconstruct a Batwa or "Pygmy" past, thereby questioning Western epistemologies that have long portrayed the Batwa as a quintessential people without history. Clearly written, jargon-free, immensely ambitious, provocative, and daring, this book will forever change the way Africanists approach their scholarship. Klieman issues a stinging reminder that the logic of race and social evolutionism prevalent in many scholarly and popular treatments of Africa is by no means dead. Her book stands as a powerful corrective to assumptions-even subconscious ones-about "backward" societies and smug beliefs about the criteria for defining what is considered civilized and what is not.

From Wikipedia: "Ota Benga was a member of the Batwa people,^[1] and lived in equatorial forests near the Kasai River in what was then the Belgian Congo. Benga had survived the slaughter of much of his village by the Force Publique,^[2] an army of King Leopold II of Belgium.

American missionary Samuel Phillips Verner was sent to Africa in 1904 under contract from the St. Louis World's Fair to bring back pygmies for exhibition. Verner met Ota Benga in the Belgian Congo that year and negotiated with a tribal slave trader for the pygmies, returning to the United States with Ota Benga and eight others.

After several months of travel in the U.S., Verner took Ota Benga to the Bronx Zoo in New York City in 1906 to find him a place to live, at the suggestion of Hermon Bumpus. Bumpus was the director of the American Museum of Natural History, and had provided a home for Verner's cargo including, briefly, Benga himself. At the zoo, Benga was allowed to roam the zoo grounds and help feed the animals. The events leading to his "exhibition" were gradual:^[2] Benga spent some of his time in the "Monkey House" exhibit, and the zoo encouraged him to hang his hammock there, and to shoot his bow and arrow at a target. The first day of the "exhibit", September 8, 1906, visitors found Benga in the Monkey House.^[2] A sign on the exhibit soon read:

The African Pigmy, "Ota Benga."
Age, 23 years. Height, 4 feet 11 inches.
Weight, 103 pounds. Brought from the
Kasai River, Congo Free State, South Cen-
tral Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner. Ex-
hibited each afternoon during September. ^[3]

From Amazon:
Book Description
This is the first ethnographic study of the farmers and foragers of northeastern Zaire since Colin Turnbull's classic works of the 1960s. Roy Richard Grinker lived for nearly two years among the Lese farmers and their long-term partners, the Efe (Pygmies), learned their languages, and gained unique insights into their complex social relations and ethnic identities. By showing how political organization is structured by ethnic and gender relations in the Lese house, Grinker challenges previous views of the Lese and Efe and other farmer-forager societies, as well as the conventional anthropological boundary between domestic and political contexts.

From the Inside Flap
"Roy Richard Grinker, writing about the relationship between Pygmies and their farmer counterparts, breaks new ground in the theory of social institutions and ethnicity."--Jan Vansina, University of Wisconsin, Madison

From the Back Cover
"Roy Richard Grinker, writing about the relationship between Pygmies and their farmer counterparts, breaks new ground in the theory of social institutions and ethnicity." (Jan Vansina, University of Wisconsin, Madison) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author
Roy Richard Grinker is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at George Washington University.

The Forest People was written by the famous anthropologist, Colin Turnbull, who idealized the Pygmy's way of life.  The book is controversial and critics have questioned it's bias, however it is one of the first books written about the mysterious world of the Pygmy.