Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Daniel Everett

This was a very interesting book about living in the amazons with the Piraha people. The author was a missionary, but I like that he was more focused on learning their language then ruining their culture and changing their beliefs. One thing that stands out that irritated me was when his wife and daughter got malaria and he just left them with his in laws with his healthy children and then went back to the Amazon seemingly "without the luggage". That might not have been how it played out, but he thought he was going to lose his wife and left. ANYway, the rest of the book was amazing. I like how he spoke first of the people so you felt like you started to know them and then compared the language. It was interesting how they lived for the now and didn't get depressed like we do on death and hunger, how they laughed when their houses blew over and didn't mind all the bugs.(though it didn't seem like the mosquitoes bothered them much) Child rearing was approached logically where they don't get coddled, but prepared for the difficulties in life.  The linguistic section was fascinating and he did a great job explaining without using a bunch of jargon or making the story seem dry. The idea of no directions like left or right and just in relation to things in the environment, and the humor that the natives could always be messing with him was entertaining. I liked learning about different communication abilities such as humming and whistling and the differences between the two.