We are regularly reminded that we live in a world in which terror and violence loom large. The September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the July bombings in the United Kingdom, and the Bali bombings that cut short the lives of many young Australians have instilled the fear of terrorism in the Western world. Media attention to terrorism has been overwhelming, and the number of books published on this theme is simply staggering. Now imagine that you are living in a world in which terror is ingrained in the culture and psyche, stemming from slave raiding and warfare of two centuries ago. These violent and traumatic events have left deep scars that people are desperately trying to come to terms with or are struggling to overcome. This is indeed the world of the Semai, which this terrific book narrates, interrogates, and makes sense of.

Author Robert Dentan (who is well known in anthropological circles for his groundbreaking work in the late 1960s on nonviolent cultures) employs a range of literary genres to ethnographically narrate Semai experiences of, and responses to, terror and violence—all the while acknowledging that experiences do not make sense on their own, but rather we have to make sense of them (p. 231). The Semai are a Malaysian aboriginal (Orang Asli) people who have struggled and continue to struggle to overcome overwhelming terror—the double meaning of the title of this book. But this is not just an ethnography of the Semai's experiences of “overwhelming terror”; it is a guidebook on how we can transform the world we live in, changing hatred into love, despair into hope, greed into generosity, and violence into peace for a brighter, sustainable future of humanity. As Dentan says, “At a time when my own country is struggling to formulate an effective response to terrorism, there may be something to learn from a people whose whole way of life seems to embody a response to terror” (p. vii). I read this statement as a clarion call to all anthropologists to make the lessons gained from their research on cultures that may hold the key to understanding and resolving global issues available to a wider audience. The key lesson offered in this book is peaceability: how can peace and love overcome fear and violence? (the four words in the subtitle of the book).

Overwhelming Terror is divided into three sections: The first provides a historical and ethnographic context for the emergence of peaceability in Semai society. In the introduction, Dentan provides a short sketch of Semai social lives, with a reflexive proviso about “writing someone's life”: “The perspective that pervades the following pages reflect not just my concerns but also my observations of other people's lives. … But all we ever know of other people's lives are the fragments we see and the stories we hear them tell, always inaccurate, about the connections between the fragments” (pp. 9–10). The following two chapters narrate Semai experiences of warfare with marauding Rawa Malays and slave raiding. Instead of fighting back or retaliating against their attackers, the Semai have opted for flight or surrender as a response to violence. Dentan contends that the social and psychological costs of such an option are severe and profound. The lasting effects of the traumas are reflected in the Semai's religious practices and cosmological order. Semai children are socialized to fear outsiders, and the world beyond the Semai social realm is deemed as threatening and viewed with deep distrust. Dentan observes a sense of “generalized powerlessness” among the Semai stemming from the “unpredictable assault by overwhelmingly powerful impersonal enemies” and from “suffering uncontrollable traumas” (p. 65). As a consequence, Dentan says, they have developed two sorts of psychological defense mechanisms: “identification with the oppressors” and “learned helplessness.” These strategies, as Dentan indicates, bolster Semai peaceability.

The second part of the book is devoted to a discussion of how these strategies shape the normative order in Semai interactions with the outside world, their dealings with demons and deities inhabiting the spiritual realm, and intracommunity interactions—which are by no means conflict free. Interpersonal conflict, however, is controlled before it breaks the peace in the community. To resolve conflict, the Semai hold extended “town meetings” called bicaraa, which serve to “let the community heal itself from the wound the conflict inflicted on community unity and community proprieties” and “defuse passions by giving everyone a chance to vent feelings until no one has anything left to say” (p. 174). One strategy that I have observed in my own research among the Semai that Dentan does not give as much attention to is the use of humor among the Semai to relieve tension. The Semai regularly carry out practical jokes and engage in horseplay and bantering. Dentan narrates how the Semai use humor in their response to their terrifying thunder god. But humor pervades Semai everyday life, and surely laughing with, and not at, fellow humans helps to avoid and avert conflict. Focusing on two case studies, the final section of the book reveals how Semai peaceability is being destroyed as their normative order loses its commanding hold on the Semai and is being supplanted by competing and contradictory social (antisocial?) orders through the process commonly known as “modernization.”

Dentan notes that “[e]thnographies are mountains and endure, theories are mayflies and don't” (p. 247). This book is indeed a massive “mountain”; anyone, irrespective of discipline or area of specialization, who traverses this mountain will gain intellectually. Its methodology is refreshingly experimental and its theoretical orientation eclectic. The arguments presented are persuasive and compelling. The moral lessons conveyed in this elegantly and eloquently expressed ethnography are insightful, pertinent, and significant, particularly for those living in a world in which terror and violence prevail.