As I read “Noble Savages,” Napoleon A. Changnon’s memoir of his years among the Yanomamo, an isolated Amazonian tribe, I started hearing Linda Ronstadt’s cover of “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me,” first as a low background hum that grew louder and more insistent across the book’s 500-plus pages.

First sentence of “Tribal Warfare” by Elizabeth Povinelli
February 17, 2013

• Michael Moats