"Ethiopia and the Origin of Civilization" by John G. Jackson is a seminal work that challenges traditional Eurocentric perspectives on the origins of civilization. Originally published in 1939, Jackson's book seeks to highlight the significant contributions of African civilizations, particularly Ethiopia, to the development of human culture and civilization. Through meticulous research and historical analysis, Jackson addresses the historical misrepresentations...

For more than 30 years, renowned anthropologist Wade Davis has traveled the globe, studying the mysteries of sacred plants and celebrating the world’s traditional cultures. His passion as an ethnobotanist has brought him to the very center of indigenous life in places as remote and diverse as the Canadian Arctic, the deserts of North Africa, the rain forests of Borneo, the mountains of Tibet, and the surreal cultural landscape of Haiti. In Light...

In essays covering everything from art and common sense to charisma and constructions of the self, the eminent cultural anthropologist and author of The Interpretation of Cultures deepens our understanding of human societies through the intimacies of "local knowledge." A companion volume to The Interpretation of Cultures, this book continues Geertz's exploration of the meaning of culture and the importance of shared cultural symbolism. With a new...

George E. Marcus is Professor of Anthropology at Rice University. Currently, he is producing an innovative series of annuals on contemporary change, Late Editions: Cultural Studies for the End of the Century. He is the coauthor of Anthropology as Cultural Critique (with Michael Fischer) and of Lives in Trust: The Fortunes of Dynastic Families in Late Twentieth-Century America (with Peter Hall). He coedited Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics...

Clifford Geertz published his famous work, The Interpretation of Cultures, in 1973. It influenced a generation of not only anthropologists but also other scholars and intellectuals. His most recent book is After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist. He is currently a faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Clifford Geertz, one of the most influential thinkers of our time, here discusses some of the most...

“The Passing of the Great Race: Or The Racial Basis of European History” is a 1916 racist and pseudoscientific book by American lawyer, self-styled anthropologist, and proponent of eugenics, Madison Grant (1865—1937). Grant expounds a theory of Nordic superiority, claiming that the "Nordic race" is inherently superior to other human "races". The theory and the book were praised by Adolf Hitler and other Nazis.

"Crime and Custom in Savage Society" represents Bronislaw Malinowski's major discussion of the relationship between law and society. Throughout his career he constructed a coherent science of anthropology, one modeled on the highest standards of practice and theory. Methodology steps forward as a core element of the refashioned anthropology, one that stipulates the manner in which anthropological data should be acquired. Malinowski's choice of law...

Sherpas are portrayed by Westerners as heroic mountain guides, or "tigers of the snow," as Buddhist adepts, and as a people in touch with intimate ways of life that seem no longer available in the Western world. In this book, Vincanne Adams explores how attempts to characterize an "authentic" Sherpa are complicated by Western fascination with Sherpas and by the Sherpas' desires to live up to Western portrayals of them. Noting that diplomatic aides...

Anton Chekhov is revered as a boldly innovative playwright and short story writer-but he wrote more than just plays and stories. In Alive in the Writing-an intriguing hybrid of writing guide, biography, and literary analysis-anthropologist and novelist Kirin Narayan introduces readers to some other sides of Chekhov: his pithy, witty observations on the writing process, his life as a writer through accounts by his friends, family, and lovers, and his...

"Michael Jackson summarizes five decades of fieldwork in Sierra Leone, Aboriginal Australia, and among African migrants in Europe in a deeply personal yet ethnographically detailed set of reflections on the imaginative and practical ways in which human beings negotiate the relationship between private and public realms"-