Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures

An international best-seller when first published, this is Wade Davis's portrait of the richness and diversity of the world's indigenous cultures and why they matter to us all.

Davis has travelled the world for more than thirty years, studying the mysteries of sacred plants and celebrating the poetics of culture. His explorations of indigenous life in places as remote and diverse as the Canadian Arctic, the rain forests of Borneo and the Amazon, and the surreal cultural landscape of Haiti have taught him that many of these cultures are in danger of losing their way of life -- a loss that affects humans on a global scale.

In Light at the Edge of the World Davis' looks at the "ethnosphere" -- the diversity of ways of thinking and living that traditional cultures have to teach us about our place in the world, and how we affect one another and our surroundings.