Colin M. Turnbull was born in London, and now lives in Connecticut. He was educated at Westminster School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied philosophy and politics. After serving in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during World War II, he held a research grant for two years in the Department of Indian Religion and Philosophy at Banaras Hindu University, in India, and then returned to Oxford, where he studied anthropology, specializing in the African field.

He has made five extended field trips to Africa, the last of which was spent mainly in the Republic of Zaïre. From these trips he drew the material for his first book, The Forest People, an account of the three years he spent with the Pygmies of Zaïre.

Mr. Turnbull was a Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He is a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and a Corresponding Member of Le Musée Royal d'Afrique Centrale.

In The Mountain PeopleColin MTurnbull describes the<br > dehumanization of an African tribelthat in leSS than three<br > generations has deteriorated from a group of prosperous and<br > daring hunters to scattered bands of hostile people whose<br > only goal is individual survivalWalied into their compounds<br > living in fear of each neighborthey have created a society<br > that frighteningly mirrors the cold and lonely selfishness of<br > our ownNot since Oscar LewisLa Vida has there been SO<br > remorseless a description of the social collapse and decay<br > of people<br >