In the 45 years since the book's release, Chagnon has remained a lightning rod for controversy about theory, method and ethics in anthropology. It's one of the best-selling anthropology texts of all time and is still in wide use. That's what anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon called the indigenous Ya̧nomamö Indians of Venezuela in his 1968 book Ya̧nomamö: The Fierce People. A member of the Ya̧nomamö people at Irotatheri community in Venezuela's Amazonas state, near the Brazilian border, in September 2012.
