The Maasai: Essays on Culture, Conservation and the Pastoral Predicament is a richly illustrated exploration of Maasai life in Tanzania's Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Combining ethnographic essays with full-color and black-and-white photography, the book offers both cultural depth and striking visual impact. Highlights include: Penetrating portrait of age-old Maasai culture and pastoral lifeways Close-up study of the Ngorongoro Maasai living under "conservation rule" Analysis of homestead symbolism, pastoral diet, and plant-based medicine Critical exploration of the politics of wildlife conservation in Maasailand Epilogue on the current plight of the Maasai facing eviction from their homeland The Maasai: Essays on Culture, Conservation and the Pastoral Predicament gathers together a selection of anthropological essays on the pastoral Maasai, based on the author's fieldwork in Ngorongoro, Tanzania, in the 1980s. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area, world-famous for its exceptionally rich wildlife, is also the home of a large population of Maasai livestock herders. The essays provide a penetrating portrait of the age-old Maasai culture and pastoral way of life and a close-up study of the predicament of the Ngorongoro Maasai who, evicted from the adjoining Serengeti National Park in the 1950s, currently live under "conservation rule" in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The book is lavishly produced and richly illustrated with color- and black-and-white photos by the author. Drawing on published sources on the Maasai in Kenya and Tanzania and the author's own extensive fieldwork in Ngorongoro, the first three essays examine little-studied aspects of Maasai culture, including the profound symbolic meanings of their apparently simple homesteads (kraals), their unique pastoral diet of milk, meat, and blood, and their peculiar ideas about medicine-almost exclusively based on wild plants. <