This 1979 book contains the findings of four years of fieldwork done in the 60s and early 70s by the well known American anthropologist Richard Lee (and others) among the !Kung San, a hunter-gatherer group living on the border of Botswana and Namibia in Southern Africa. All realms of !Kung life are documented in great detail, including the Kalahari desert environment they live in, its plant resources and animals, the tools the !Kung use, their hunting skills, the division of labour between men and women, and much more. It doesn't stay with written descriptions of the !Kung (which always have the danger of subjectivity), but the information is supplemented with a large number of tables and figures with quantitative information, like relative hunting success of !Kung men, caloric and protein levels in the !Kung diet, and !Kung homicide statistics. Some of the information might surprise you. The lives of hunter-gatherers are often thought of as "nasty, brutish, and short", but the !Kung show hardly any signs of malnutrition, it turns out they need to work only 12 to 21 hours a week to get enough food, and there are quite some !Kung over 60 years of age. Studying a hunting and gathering lifestyle is very important because humans have lived like this for about 95% of their existence and so it contains valuable information about were we come from. Unfortunately, in the world there are hardly any people living like this anymore. Lee reports that at the end of his fieldwork even the !Kung were, for better or worse, changing their way of life quickly with the arrival of agriculture, shops, beer, and a cash economy.