The Missionaries is a searing examination of attempts by North American fundamentalist Christian missionaries to convert indigenous tribes around the globe. In a distillation of a lifetime's observation on the ground, Norman Lewis contrasts the self-contained, peaceful traditions of the tribal peoples he so admires with the violence, the ruthless double-standards and the greed of the men and women who seek to convert them.

Lewis's description leaves the reader devastated by man's capacity for cruelty and with no doubt as to which of the two - missionaries or tribespeople - inhabits the superior culture. It was Lewis's writing on this subject that led to the birth of Survival International, which seeks to counter his gloomy prediction that 'in another thirty years no trace of aboriginal life anywhere in the world will have survived'.