Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game

great book, took a little longer than thought to arrive, but was right around xmas

Paul Shepard is the kind of author that should be read over and over again. Each time through, you will pick up more, and slowly your view of the world will change. In this book, Shepard weaves together anthropology, psychology, social criticism, and prehistory to paint a picture of what we used to be, what we are now, and what we can be in the future. More specifically, Shepard urges us to recapture the form of hunter-gathering. This is not to say that we can turn back the clock of history and go back to the caves. Rather, he is espousing a closer contact with the natural world, which is the only thing that can trigger the crucial psychological transitions that make up our lifecycle. Without this kind of exposure to the Otherness of the real world, we remain locked in adolescence and even pre-adolescence, unable to maturely experience the people and places around us. Read this book, then read "Nature and Madness", then read his other books --- then REREAD them, over and over. His stuff is that good.