Tristes Tropiques was an immensely popular bestseller when it was first published in France in 1955.

Claude Levi-Strauss's groundbreaking study of the societies of a number of Amazonian peoples is a corner stone ofstructural anthropology and an exploration by the author of his ownintellectual roots as a professor of philosophy in Brazil before theSecond World War, as a Jewish exile from Nazi-occupied Europe, and later as a world-renowned academic (he taught at New York's New Schoolfor Social Research and was French cultural attache to the UnitedStates). Levi-Strauss's central journey leads from the Amazon basinthrough the dense upland jungles of Brazil. There, among the Amerindiantribes - the Caduveo, Bororo, Nambikwara, and Tupi-Kawahib - he found"a human society reduced to its most basic expression." Levi-Strauss's discussion of his fieldwork in Tristes Tropiques endures as a milestoneof anthropology, but the book is also, in its brilliant diversions onother, more familiar cultures, a great work of literature, a vivid travelogue, and an engaging memoir - a demonstration of the marvelousmental agility of one of the century's most important thinkers. Presented here is the translation by John and Doreen Weightman of the complete text of the revised French edition of 1968, together with the original photographs and illustrations.