By
JANET LOUISE GIVENS

AT HOME ON THE KAZAKH STEPPE: MAKING FRIENDS FOR AMERICA
is the first serious American memoir of life among the Kazakh people. These ancient people of nomadic origins, whose DNA links them directly to the Native American Indians, are proud of their traditions and beginning to rediscover the stories behind them, forbidden for so long. They are also a modern people, hungry to participate in the wider world they've only glimpsed on MTV, in B movies, and, more recently, on the Internet.

Behind the personal account of cultivating friendships and vivid descriptions of a town once built with gulag labor, beyond the splashes of Kazakh history, there is a deeper story, the universal story that is of growing importance as our world gets smaller: the story of bridging the gulf between two cultures.

At Home on the Kazakh Steppe is the story of an American sociologist, psychotherapist, and humanist determined to present a different face of America to the world, an average grandmother who came to understand and appreciate her own culture better by living away from it for two years.