"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world."--Margaret MeadThis quotation--found on posters and bumper stickers, and adopted as the motto for hundreds of organizations worldwide--speaks to the global influence...

Drawing on work with Indian and Japanese patients, a prominent American psychoanalyst explores inner worlds that are markedly different from the Western psyche. A series of fascinating case studies illustrates Alan Roland's argument: the "familial self,"...

Few scholars have had a more varied career than Sally Falk Moore. Once a lawyer for an elite New York law firm, her career has led her to the Nuremberg trials where she prepared cases against major industrialists, to Harvard, to the Spanish archives...

In anthropology as much as in popular imagination, kings are figures of fascination and intrigue, heroes or tyrants in ways presidents and prime ministers can never be. This collection of essays by two of the world’s most distinguished...

David MacDougall is a pivotal figure in the development of ethnographic cinema and visual anthropology. As a filmmaker, he has directed in Africa, Australia, India, and Europe. His prize-winning films (many made jointly with his wife, Judith MacDougall)...

Even in our multicultural contemporary society, the image of the savage primitive survives. But in this intriguing collection, a number of noted anthropologists assess the place of aggression in non-literate societies, arguing that most non-literate...

Scan down a list of essential works in any introduction to anthropology course and you are likely to see Marcel Mauss’ masterpiece, The Gift. With this new translation, Mauss’ classic essay is returned to its original context, published alongside the...

Collecting a decade of work from iconic anthropologist and writer Michael Taussig, The Corn Wolf pinpoints a moment of intellectual development for the master stylist, exemplifying the “nervous system” approach to writing and truth that has characterized...

This book identifies critical moments in contemporary Indian history, such as the Partition of India, the Bhopal industrial disaster, and recent widow deaths. It describes the implications of these events for India and analyzes, through them, the nature...

Genealogy has long been one of humanity's greatest obsessions. But with the rise of genetics, and increasing media attention to it through programs like Who Do You Think You Are? and Faces of America, we are now told that genetic markers can definitively...

There is no more seemingly incorrigible criminal type than the child sex offender. Said to suffer from a deeply rooted paraphilia, he is often considered as outside the moral limits of the human, profoundly resistant to change. Despite these assessments,...

While most people would not consider sponsoring an orphan's education to be in the same category as international humanitarian aid, both acts are linked by the desire to give. Many studies focus on the outcomes of humanitarian work, but the impulses that...

The bestselling, classic text on one anthropologist’s incredible experience living among the African Mbuti Pygmies, and what he learned from their culture, customs, and love of life.In this bestselling book, Colin Turnbull, a British cultural...

Our early ancestors lived in small groups and worked actively to preserve social equality. As they created larger societies, however, inequality rose, and by 2500 bce truly egalitarian societies were on the wane. In The Creation of Inequality, Kent...

Making PCR is the fascinating, behind-the-scenes account of the invention of one of the most significant biotech discoveries in our time—the polymerase chain reaction. Transforming the practice and potential of molecular biology, PCR extends scientists'...

2007 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleA comparative analysis of the U.S.'s contemporary immigrants to those who arrived a century agoAccording to the 2000 census, more than 10% of U.S. residents were foreign born; together with their American-born...

In this acclaimed book, Torgovnick explores the obsessions,fears, and longings that have produced Western views of theprimitive. Crossing an extraordinary range of fields(anthropology, psychology, literature, art, and popularculture), Gone Primitive will...

A people-centered approach to global healthWhen People Come First critically assesses the expanding field of global health. It brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to address the medical, social, political, and...

Clifford Geertz, in his 1973 Interpretation of Cultures, brought about an epistemological revolution unprecedented since Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism. In place of Lévi-Strauss’s deep structures, Geertz placed “deep meanings” and “thick descriptions,” in...

Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be human―and thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on...