Jomo Kenyatta the grandson of a Kikuyu medicine man was among the foremost leaders of African nationalism and one of the great men of the modern world In the s he studied at the London School of Economics and took his degree in anthropology under Bronislay Malinowski one result of which is this now famous account of his own Kikuyu tribe Facing Mount Kenya is a central document of the highest distinction in anthropological literature an invaluable key to the structure of African society and the nature of the African mind Facing Mount Kenya is not only a formal study of life and death work and play sex and the family in one of the greatest tribes of contemporary Africa but a work of considerable literary merit The very sight and sound of Kikuyu tribal life presented here are at once comprehensive and intimate and as precise as they are compassionate