Around the World discussion

I have a personal connection to New Guinea (both sides.) As a child, I read missionary memoirs on my parents' shelves, and I took a world music class as an undergrad that changed my career path. At one point I was pondering the missionary side of ethnomusicology, and one of Wycliffe's favorite places to go is PNG because of the numerous languages represented. I did not go that path but sometimes reading books set there feels like my alternate history or something. So I went poking around for more books in New Guinea to read after reading Four Corners: A Journey into the Heart of Papua New Guinea, and thought I'd share them with you!

Fiction:
The White Mary by Kira Salak (same author as Four Corners, in her first fiction attempt)
Euphoria by Lily King

Memoir and Biography:
Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman
Michael Rockefeller: New Guinea Photographs, 1961
The New Guinea Memoirs Of Jean Baptiste Octave Mouton
Lost in Shangri-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II by Mitchell Zukoff

Missionary memoirs (separating these out because they usually include a hefty dosage of religious message, and of course tend to be pretty dismissive of native culture as they are there to SAVE people, so fair warning):
Peace Child: An Unforgettable Story of Primitive Jungle Treachery in the 20th Century by Don Richardson
Into the Heart of Papua New Guinea by Kay Liddle
Deeper into the Heart of Papua New Guinea by Kay Liddle
Mission Possible: The Story of a Wycliffe Missionary by Marilyn Laszlo
Selfless: The Story of Sr. Theophane's Missionary Life in the Jungles of Papua New Guinea by Reida Immolata

Other non-fiction:
Where the Spirits Dwell: An Odyssey in the Jungle of New Guinea by Tobias Schneebaum (sounds a lot like Four Corners)
Gardens of War: Life and Death in the New Guinea Stone Age
Under the Mountain Wall by Peter Matthiessen (I understand this can be read in conjunction with Gardens of War)
The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond - this book focuses on the Dani people, one of the groups targeted by the Indonesian government for genocide according to Kira Salak
From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea by Paige West
Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee by Dean Cycon

NOT recommended:
There is one book that has all negative reviews, but tends to pop up a lot alongside these other books. It sounds like these two journalists wrote a very erroneous account of a people group based on a two-week trip into the jungle. (For one thing, they aren't lost!) The Lost Tribe: A Harrowing Passage into New Guinea's Heart of Darkness

A very nice list!

I am going to have to save this thread - great info - thanks Jenny.