Discovering the world of the Pirahãs -- The Amazon -- The cost of discipleship -- Sometimes you make mistakes -- Material culture and the absence of ritual -- Families and community -- Nature and the immediacy of experience -- A teenager named Túkaaga : murder and society -- Land to live free -- Caboclos : vignettes of Amazonian Brazilian life -- Changing channels with Pirahã sounds -- Pirahã words -- How much grammar do people need? -- Values and talking : the partnership between language and culture -- Recursion : language as a matrioshka doll -- Crooked heads and straight heads : perspectives on language and truth -- Converting the missionary.

A linguist offers a thought-provoking account of his experiences and discoveries while living with the Pirahã, a small tribe of Amazonian Indians living in central Brazil and a people possessing a language that defies accepted linguistic theories and reflects a culture that has no counting system, concept of war, or personal property, and lives entirely in the present.