A provocative, contentious, and romantic figure, Colin Turnbull charged into the limelight in 1961 with his best-selling "The Forest People, " a sympathetic account of the Mbuti pygmies. A younger colleague who had originally dismissed Turnbull, Roy Richard Drinker has written a mesmerizing biography of Turnbull, which captures the closed, homophobic scholarly culture of the day. Drinker dove into Turnbull's papers, discovering a difficult, endearing and original character who maintained a 30-year relationship with Joseph Towles, a younger black man, became a Buddhist, and fought for social justice.  (AFR89, $17.00)