Books - Margaret Mead

Product Description:
The autobiography of a pioneer, this is Margaret Mead's story of her life as a woman and as an anthropologist. An enduring cultural icon, she came to represent the new woman, successfully combining motherhood with career, and scholarship with concern for its role in the lives of ordinary people. 62 photos.



Customer Review: Fieldwork as a Way of Life:
Margaret Mead lived her whole life with a passion and intensity that never abandoned her. The sense of urgency in which she seized each day was linked to her choice of anthropology as an academic discipline. "When I was a graduate student I used to wake up saying to myself: "The last man on Raratonga who knows anything about the past will probably die today". I must hurry." "Even in remote parts of the world ways of life about which nothing was known were vanishing before the onslaught of civilization. The work of recording these unknown ways of life had to be done now--now--or they would be lost forever. Other things could wait, but not this most urgent task."

Anthropology presented her with "an opportunity to do work that matters". Her vocation consolidated when she attended an academic meeting in Toronto in 1924. "Everyone there had a field of his own, each had a "people" to whom he referred in his discussions (...) I, too, wanted to have a "people" on whom I could base my own intellectual life". But she soon discovered that many tribal people already "belonged" to practicing anthropologists: "this was a period when each "field" was rather possessively claimed by the particular fieldworker who had done the research on the culture, a situation that was complementary to the scarcity of fieldworkers and the necessity of spreading them very thin".

Franz Boas, then the don of anthropological studies in America, was in charge of allocating scarce human and financial resources to cover a vanishing number of primitive cultures. "He had to plan--much as if he were a general with only a handful of troops available to save a whole country--where to place each student most strategically, so that each piece of work would count and nothing would be wasted." Boas wanted Mead to work on adolescence among American Indians. She wanted to set sail to the Southern Seas. In the end, "Boas gave in. But he refused to let me go to the remote Tuamotu Islands; I must choose and island to which a ship came regularly--at least every three weeks. This was a restriction I could accept."

"When I agreed to study the adolescent girl and Professor Boas consented to my doing this field work in Samoa, I had a half-hour instruction in which Professor Boas told me that I must be willing to seem to waste time just sitting about and listening but that I must not waste my time doing ethnography, that is, studying the culture as a whole. Fortunately, many people--missionaries, jurists, government officials, and old-fashioned ethnographers--had been to Samoa and so the temptation to "waste time" on ethnography would be less." He also told her to be careful of her health and to "stick to individuals and pattern". That was all the training in field methods that she received.

She did not come unequipped to the field, however. "My training in psychology had given me ideas about the use of samples, tests, and systematic inventories of behavior." She was able to carry out her work on the life of the adolescent girl in nine months by observing subjects from various ages starting from pre-adolescence, thereby "inventing a cross-sectional method that can be used when one cannot stay many years in the field but wants to give a dynamic picture of how human beings develop." She experimented with various tests and data-gathering methods that she invented, using pictures from magazines or little colored squares.

Later on, in other fields, she pioneered other innovative research methods: the collection of large samples like the 35,000 children's drawings she gathered in Papua New Guinea when she "found, contrary to all expectations, that these "primitive children" showed no trace of the easy animism of our own children, who draw the man in the moon and houses with faces", or her experimentation with sequence photography ("Whereas we had planned to take 2,000 photographs, we took 25,000) and film recording in Bali. She was also constantly willing to raise bold theoretical questions, and to present her findings in comprehensible terms.

For a generation and more, Margaret Mead came to embody the anthropologist as hero, armed with the tools of social science to gather the lessons that people living in vastly different cultures had to teach us. Her maiden work, Coming of Age in Samoa, acquired best seller status almost by accident: having completed the manuscript, she added two chapters based on lectures she gave to a working girls' club. It was these concluding chapters, in which she drew broad lessons on the relevance of her observations to an American audience, that brought her fame and recognition.

One of the reason why Mead's work came to be valued outside of anthropology was her appropriation by the feminist movement in the 1960s and the 1970s. Her description of other cultures structured along different patterns of relations helped American feminist theorists think about then-pressing questions of the universalism or cross-cultural variation of male dominance or gender subordination. Patriarchy, to use a shorthand. But Margaret Mead's life story shows that a traditional if somewhat slightly unconventional household could nurture a strong, independent woman intended on leading a life on her own terms, and also that her ambition to contribute to the accumulation of knowledge was compatible with her strong desire to experience motherhood and pass on her wisdom to her offsprings.

Blackberry Winter is an autobiography written in a conventional mode, in which life and work are closely interwoven. Although it contains observations on fieldwork that will be of particular interest to anthropologists, it is destined to a general audience, and the chapters are rich in personal details and reflexions. As Mead writes in the Prologue, "I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples, faraway peoples, so that Americans might better understand themselves (...) In much the same way, I bring my own life to throw what light it may on how children can be brought up so that parents and children, together, can weather the roughest seas."

Customer Review: Margaret Mead is a Joy to Read:
This is a wonderful book to read for those interested in Mead's personality. I was surprised to read how innocent, delicate, loving, stubborn, and calculated this woman was. As she goes back through her life, she realizes how perfectly it all seemed to fit. She also seemed to realize, as she wrote this book, how much she always knew exactly what she wanted to do at each crossroad in her life. Margaret Mead tells us her story, from her perspective and it is a breath of fresh air.

Yes, this book is a must for future anthropologists. She walks us through the many struggles in the field (I found her insights on language learning of great value) and sets the picture for an age where American anthropology was teeming with its most famous characters even today. Mead paints a unique picture of the personalities of Boaz, Benedict and her three husbands.

Mead became something only the slightest fraction of us wannabe anthropologists could ever become. For those wanting fame and respect (come on admit it we all do at least a bit). There are few clues in this book to how Mead managed this. The book is nothing more than a beautiful account of being human. However, with her timing at a particular point in American history, her confidence and perhaps a splash of luck Mead became and remains an icon.

Customer Review: Fascinating Glimpses of Her Early Life:
This book provides Mead's accounts of the people and events that most affected her thought and research. About half the book is devoted to her life before she began her career as an anthropologist. We meet her parents, Edward Mead and Emily Fogg Mead. Edward was an economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Emily divided her time between managing the household and pursuing her doctoral studies in the social sciences. Edward's mother, Martha Ramsay Mead, a former schoolteacher and principal, also lived with the family and was the primary director of their home schooling. Margaret describes her relationship with each of her parents and with her grandmother and siblings in turn. We learn how the family moved every season from one domicile to another, and how this shaped Margaret's concept of "home". Margaret also discusses how Edward related to his academic work and colleagues (such as when he organized a group to guarantee Scott Nearing's salary for a year after his dismissal). Margaret describes her schooling in detail, from the approach to learning that her grandmother and mother instilled with their home schooling efforts, to the various traditional schools that she attended and the social lessons she learned from them. She also discusses her college years and friends.

The second part of the book describes Mead's adult and professional life. She explains her relationships with all three of her husbands, and how in the case of Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson, they collaborated together in their fieldwork. She also relates how she came to work with Franz Boas, and how he directed her research early in her career. She tells us about how she came to know Ruth Benedict, and how she considered Benedict one of her closest colleagues and friends. The last part of the book, covering Margaret's experiences as a mother and grandmother, is not as detailed, but does provide some personal observations.

For me, the most interesting aspects of this book were Mead's own interpretation of her motivations and accomplishments. She was a firm believer in both the value and necessity of studying cultures very different from her own. On the first page of the text, she tells us "I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples, faraway peoples, so that Americans might better understand themselves." Later she notes, "to clear one's mind of presuppositions is a very hard thing to do and, without years of practice, all but impossible when one is working in one's own culture or in another that is very close to it." In summing up her work, she states, "I went to Samoa-as, later, I went to the other societies on which I have worked-to find out more about human beings, human beings like ourselves in everything except their culture. Through the accidents of history, these cultures had developed so differently from ours that knowledge of them could shed a kind of light upon us, upon our potentialities and our limitations, that was unique." Some anthropologists today have a different approach, believing that since one cannot understand a foreign culture completely, it is better to stick to observing one's own culture. There is still much validity, however, in Mead's point that you can't know what is natural or unnatural, innate or learned behaviors, unless you are aware of the wide range of possibilities exhibited by the myriad cultures of the world.


Customer Review: A Must For Future Anthropologists:
This book is a must read for a future Anthroplogists.
It clearly brings together all her theories and it is a
heartfelt view on a extremly successful and inspiring
person in this field. I truly enjoyed her book and her
views on culture and the future of Anthropology. I became a big
fan of hers and will continue reading the rest of her books.
If you are only slightly interested in Cultural Anthropolgy
then I suggest you read her books. They are easy to read and
very insightful about culture.
It is worth every penny spend.

Customer Review: Interesting memoir of the early years:
This autobiography is especially interesting for its insight into the professional life of a woman scholar in the 1920's and 1930's in a then new field of inquiry, although Mead did not encounter the extreme levels of resistance that make heroes and role models. Greek societies at her first college seem to have been far more repressive and damaging than were her graduate programs or employers. The professional rivalries are interesting. The book is especially strong in its depiction of Mead's parents, whose contrasting traits we can easily see influencing the daughter's ideas and character. Mead seems to be a keen observer of them, frank about their strengths and weaknesses, as dispassionate as she was in describing people in New Guinea. Mead is far less interested in or detailed about her three husbands. In fact, the autobiography seems oddly reticent, considering that its author was open minded, professionally interested in the sexual habits of other peoples, and unintimidated. She was able to ask Pacific Islanders what positions they preferred for intercourse, but unable in the autobiography to give a sense of the life of her marriages. We learn in detail what she packed for a trip, but only discover in passing that a divorce occurred. This book rewards readers more with cultural history than with a sense of the author's emotional life.

Product Description:
Howard's definitive biography of the woman who was one of the giants of the 20th century covers Mead's professional accomplishments, three marriages, intense friendships, and groundbreaking travels. 16-page photograph insert.

Product Description:

Product Description:

Mead's anthropological examination of seven Pacific island tribes analyzes the dynamics of primitive cultures to explore the evolving meaning of "male" and "female" in modern American society. On its publication in 1949, the New York Times declared, "Dr. Mead's book has come to grips with the cold war between the sexes and has shown the basis of a lasting sexual peace." This edition, prepared for the centennial of Mead's birth, features introductions by Helen Fisher and Mead's daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson. Male & Female remains an extraordinary document of great relevance, while Mead's research methods and fieldwork offer a blueprint for scholars in future generations.

Customer Review: review:
The whole book could have been written in half of its size. Not very well written due to being too wordy, hard to follow.

Customer Review: M. Mead:
Everyons should read M. Mead's research. Her research explains many issues that remain current topics of contention.

Product Description:
A uniquely revealing biography of two eminent twentieth century American women. Close friends for much of their lives, Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead met at Barnard College in 1922, when Mead was a student, Benedict a teacher. They became sexual partners (though both married), and pioneered in the then male-dominated discipline of anthropology. They championed racial and sexual equality and cultural relativity despite the generally racist, xenophobic, and homophobic tenor of their era. Mead’s best-selling Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) and Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), and Benedict’s Patterns of Culture (1934), Race (1940), and The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), were landmark studies that ensured the lasting prominence and influence of their authors in the field of anthropology and beyond.

With unprecedented access to the complete archives of the two women—including hundreds of letters opened to scholars in 2001—Lois Banner examines the impact of their difficult childhoods and the relationship between them in the context of their circle of family, friends, husbands, lovers, and colleagues, as well as the calamitous events of their time. She shows how Benedict inadvertently exposed Mead to charges of professional incompetence, discloses the serious errors New Zealand anthropologist Derek Freeman made in his famed attack on Mead’s research on Samoa, and reveals what happened in New Guinea when Mead and colleagues engaged in a ritual aimed at overturning all gender and sexual boundaries.

In this illuminating and innovative work, Banner has given us the most detailed, balanced, and informative portrait of Mead and Benedict—individually and together—that we have had.



Customer Review: Book Review for Anthro Class, but you might get something out of it.:
For my term paper for Anthropology of Homosexualities, and based on related reading in our class, I chose to review and report on "Intertwined Lives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict and Their Circle." I personally had no idea either of these women had any connections to the queer community prior to taking this class despite having heard of them, so it was exciting to learn about women who not only shaped the face of anthropology for all time, but also coalesced with one another on their work, on their growth and development, and in love. I would like to mention before we even get started that this book has wonderful pictures that helps bring the book to life. Allow me to show you an example. Now, I am not going to attempt to lure you to read this book by telling and showing you that it has pictures, but how many non-fiction books have you read that have been made bearable and even good by the inclusion of pictures? Be honest with yourself and I think my point is made.

(http://find.galegroup.com/stage/A112404910_DQ1039190.jpeg)
If you take the time to read this entire review, you will see I give it somewhat of a mixed bag review. Please in no way allow this to deter you from reading the book. I am pretty much able to admit I have a huge crush on both Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead now as a result of reading this book, coupled with a need to stifle my desire to switch majors again and my rededication to finding a suitable mentor. I laughed, I cried, (I may have nodded off a few times) and I used the dictionary a lot. Tangible proof that this book impacted my life is evidenced by my new flapper haircut and 1940's feminine aesthetic. It takes an influential book to do all of that! But I digress. This is a solid book by a notable researcher. Lois Banner wrote the introduction to Mead's book on Ruth Benedict, a situation that shows a deep respect for her on Mead's end. I bring up some points about the book that were noticeable to me, a sophomore at City College. In looking around at other book reviewers, a tad late in the game, I am pleased and relieved to see I am not the only person that found the things I found to not work a tad off.
I also attempted to remain more formal in this paper, as you will see following this paragraph. As you may have already inferred, I prefer to use a less formal and more familiar voice in my writing. However, out of respect and admiration for all of these women I honestly tried to stay on point and provide solid critical analysis. So if you are out there reading this someday, Lois Banner, please do not be offended. I loved your book, really. And besides, what do I know? I may be an advanced reader, but really I am brand new to the study of anthropology!
In writing this epic work of regarding two huge personalities and careers, Banner took on a giant task and ended up with an amazing book about the lives and times of Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and their families, friends, adversaries and colleagues. She goes into great detail and provides some amazing insights and in-depth analysis of these powerful women's scope of influence; on others, themselves, and each other. However it is not without its problems. I feel that her analysis is too far reaching at some points and she seemingly take some liberties. I will expound on that idea as this review proceeds.
She starts the book off with a short teaser of Ruth and Margaret's personal relationship, diving straight into the depth of their complex arguments and reasoning for where they were in their lives. This is a snapshot of Rome in 1926, and the prologue was never really brought to any pleasing conclusion in the full text, as it was barely ever mentioned again outside of the idea of Benedict's Sibyls.
This is immediately followed with an in-depth and obviously well researched genealogical profile of both women. The first four chapters of this book are really dry. It was a challenge to make it through this part of the book, and that is not an exaggeration. Expectations are set to read about two brilliant dykes and here I am trying to shuffle 30 different names vague relations and quickly connections... it could have been done in a more imaginative and inviting manner. She could have looked to the writing style of Ruth she obviously coveted and remembered that not everyone reading the book had any concept of either of these women prior to reading it. Of course I am not saying it is not a needed part of the book or that it will be dry reading to all readers. She goes further than that and tries to highlight any reform work being done by woman in their respective families and pioneering attitudes towards women by the male figures in their lives. It brings into focus their similarities and differences which will provide great insight into some aspects of their relationships. It serves its purpose; it is just dull and a taxing way to start a book.
Speaking of dull and boring, I do not want this to be a play by play of the book which is what it is already well on its way to becoming. Forgive me, dear reader, as I lapse out of this and into something a little more critical, in some ways flattering, and hopefully more interesting. So a main point in my book review that I feel the need to mention is that I was left at the end of the book feeling more confused than enlightened in some respects and inspired and motivated in others. I guess in some ways the confusion comes from Banner's analysis of Mead's work. Perhaps it really was as scattered as she presents it, but I feel like in her concurrent role as an educator perhaps she could have pushed herself to come up with a more concise and easy to follow version.
However, I do get the impression that trying to document Mead's life was an enormous challenge and Banner did bring this part of her personality across clearly. Maybe to gain insight into Mead's life and theories you have to accept the fact that there is no neat and pat timeline and to the extent that her genius was influenced by the cultures she visited, the mentors she chose, the lovers she pillow-talked with and the breakneck pace at which all of these things simultaneously occurred. And if that is indeed the case, which I suspect it to be, perhaps Banner really did do the best job that anyone could. I will also say that the conclusion left me scratching my head, as it was abrupt. I would have liked to see one more chapter dedicated to Mead's life after Benedict's death.
However, considering the questions you pose of us, perhaps I will shape this portion my review with my responses to them. And then get back to the play by play, if it is still necessary.
Based on your knowledge, did the anthropologist "get it right"?
Yes and no. I think that she did beautiful and complex research. I would have no basis to complain about that. It is obviously a labor of love and admiration and her dedication and devotion certainly come through. That alone is reason enough to read this book. Banner was thoroughly entranced with these fascinating women and their many interwoven friends, ideas, and lovers.
I think where I liked this book was the valid connections she made. By pouring over their letters, research, and books she does an amazing job of bringing to light the depth of this relationship. She is a great detective for the most part, and she obviously is a talented historical researcher. She took what I am sure an enormous, overwhelming amount of information and brings it together in a readable and real fashion.
I feel like I want to be careful in being too harsh in my criticisms of this book. Even as Mead and Benedict realized in their time that the woman's rights movement had made leaps and bounds, I feel that the queer community has as well and I should not have fear about pushing back the movement in finding one writer's analysis a little overreaching. However, I think that this fear speaks to the importance of this book, and its place in showing how our history as a community exists even if it is shrouded and needs to be rooted out. It was scary for Mead and Benedict to be queer and I feel nervous for both of them at times. I felt connected to both of them and felt I got to know secrets and things I would never otherwise know. This is a huge triumph and in the end what makes the book totally worth reading.
Banner has a great oversight into both women's lives as their duel biographer. She highlighted their work on gender issues, women's issues, and their interconnectedness. I think where she misses the mark is in her armchair analysis of both women, and for attaching too much meaning to small snippets of something as subjective as the women's poetry.
This extrapolation is present throughout the book and the "harness" incident is how I remember it most clearly. (pgs 185 and 223) I understand that a certain amount of conjecture is going to occur in a book compiled in the manner as this one was, and I give her credit for working directly with Mead and perhaps that having shed some additional insight into these ideas. However, it does not take away from the fact that her aureate description of the women's poetry is a tad bombastic. (Please note my attempt at irony here.)
Was the ethnography wordy, inconsistent, or complicated? Was an argument well formed and completed?
Well, it is a 400+ page book, so yes on the wordy count by default. I think I already touched on the one glaring inconsistency, which is starting the book with a daring teaser foreshadowing their tryst and then leaving the reader high and dry when that is the only real mention of this meeting of the women. I think the other place that Banner was the most inconsistent was with her analysis of Mead. I felt more satisfied and informed with the information presented about Benedict. At this point I will admit that my biographical knowledge of these women was next to nothing prior to reading this book and I had only read parts of their work as it relates to women's history, queer studies and this anthropology class. I, of course, get the feeling that Margaret was harder to "get" for Banner. As many times as she changed her lovers, her career focus, her theories, she changed her anthropological mind. I think perhaps my point in bringing this up was that I could have felt just as confused about Mead doing my own research and I suppose I feel a little let down. Mead's theories are many and far-flung, and admittedly so mutable it is hard to hold on for the ride. Banner, as her biographer, could have done a better job presenting Mead's development as an anthropologist and reformer in a linear and easy to follow fashion. It was as if she got so caught up in the detective work in deciphering Mead and Benedict's love affair that she just lost her concentration in explaining Mead's actual theories. Which, when I think of it, is kind of adorable and perhaps I should not be so harsh, but the squares thing really kind of bugged me.
So the best concrete example of this I could come up with would be her explanation of Mead's "squares." I have read and re-read this part of the book and still have no clear idea on what the final outcome of this collaborative thinking Mead engaged in with her then husband Reo Fortune and her future husband Gregory Bateson and so thoroughly integrated into her life and social circle. I would further go ahead and say I find this disappointing with Banner's position as a history and gender studies professor and that perhaps this fact alone allows me to hold her to this higher standard.
Coming back to the glowing part of the review, I feel that almost all of her arguments and insights are very enlightening and well supported. I would especially point to the characterization of both women. I have already made my case for the instances I felt she fell short of the mark. The journey of Mead, as steered by Benedict as her teacher, life coach, lover and colleague, is an amazing thing to watch unfold. Banner has an astute grasp of the path and mutation of their views and ties it in with their male counterparts and lovers. I also find the way that both Mead and Benedict find ways to excel even amidst oppression for being women in the times they lived. One example of this is how it was made abundantly clear that some fieldwork was only able to be preformed by women, and by doing it and doing it so well opened the door for women to do all sorts of fieldwork and beyond in the field.
I also appreciated Banner's careful consideration to the important female friendships they held outside of one another and how they built a powerful network of these women. I think at some point the Ash Can Cats must have been called an intelligentsia and their networking was sophisticated and effective. Banner makes a point to emphasis their loyalty to their friends, including their male allies. Her treatment of the fluidity and complexity of all of their various relationships outside of each other is also well done.
Another theme throughout the book was the crossing of disciplines and Banner's bringing to view both of the women's response to the major scientists and thinkers of their times and the corresponding movements. This was very well done in relation to Boas and the line Benedict had to tow as his virtual replacement and both of their relationship with him in general. This also had an impact on their dealings with other members of the scientific community and this is well explored as well.
This brings me to one other point in the book I felt was awkward. At the beginning of the last four chapters Banner addresses the reader and asks for us to remember that for the next four chapters spanned the trials and tribulations of World War II and the Nazi regime without really talking about it outside of the work the women did. She did such a wonderful job of interweaving the other time periods, I just wonder why the sudden jump in writing styles. It was almost not worth mentioning except it felt jerky and out of place.
How valid are the conclusions?
I feel her conclusions in regards to Mead and Benedict are insightful and valid despite my minor exceptions presented. At the conclusion of the book, I am compelled to read "Blackberry Winter," Mead's personal memoir at the very least. Both of them are very inspirational women even though I personally identified with Mead more. The end result of this book was my learning a comprehensive review of the development of these two women geniuses and social reformers along with a wonderful perspective on this slice of history and their place in it. It gave me insight into the different types of queer culture before there was "queer" or a clear culture. I love the way through Banner's book we witness the development of anthropology from one of the most surprising and productive friendships in it and that that they are woman in our recent history who succeeded in so many ways, when it was not as acceptable to be a woman in positions of power or influence. It was thought provoking and, yes, at times sort of confusing but in a sort of enjoyable way.
And in a definitive conclusion, I would urge anyone who has an interest in history, unique historical perspectives, feminism, anthropology, lesbians, early development of queer theory and gender diversity would gain a wealth of information about that broad range of topics and more. Besides, I would again remind you that it has pictures. Who does not love a 400+ book with pictures!
[...]











WORKS CITED:
Banner, Lois W. Intertwined Lives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Their Circle. New York:
Knopf 2003.
Maksel, Rebecca. "Love among anthropologists." The Women's Review of Books 21.4 (Jan 2004): 15(3). General OneFile. Gale. City College of San Francisco. 2 Dec. 2008
.
"Intertwined Lives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Their Circle. (Nonfiction)." Publishers Weekly 250.26 (June 30, 2003): 69(1). General OneFile. Gale. City College of San Francisco. 2 Dec. 2008
.

Product Description:

Margaret Mead was famous for keeping in touch with a wide circle of friends as we see in this collection of wonderfully revealing correspondence from the field. Written over a period of half a century, these letters to friends, family, and colleagues detail her first fieldwork in Samoa and go on to record her now famous anthropological endeavors in mainland New Guinea, the Admiralty Islands, and Bali. Enhanced by photographs, these intelligent, vivid, frequently funny, and often poetic letters tell us much about Mead's passion for and understanding of preliterate cultures. But they are equally valuable as a fundamental text on the science -- and art -- of anthropology. This edition, prepared for the centennial of Mead's birth, features introductions by Jan Morris and Mead's daughter. Mary Catherine Bateson.

Customer Review: Interesting:
This book is a collection of letters written by Margaret Mead to friends and family while she was working in the field. The letters span her entire career, from 1925 until 1975, and are accompanied in every chapter by photos by and of Mead. I found the letters quite intriguing, both for what they said as well as for what they didn't say. Some of the letters provide travelogue-like details of what conditions were like at her research sites. Some tell us a little more of what she was really thinking about the people and cultures that she later wrote formal descriptions of. Some of the later letters are quite formal, more journal entries than personal letters.

I found some of the most interesting materials actually to be the short introductions that Mead wrote at the beginning of each chapter, where she glosses quickly over the enormous upheavals in her personal life. In chapter 1, she says goodbye to her "student husband, Luther Cressman." In the next chapter, she notes that she stopped in Auckland on her way to the Admiralty Islands to marry Reo Fortune before starting her 1928-29 research project in Manus. Then in chapter 5, she stops in Singapore to marry Gregory Bateson in preparation for their 1936-1939 project in Bali. Since I had only read Mead's professional writings before, the book's casual mentions of frequent successive marriages aroused some curiosity about her personal life. A quick Web search revealed quite a bit more, including a long-standing connection with Ruth Benedict (see for example "Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict: The Kinship of Women" by Hilary Lapsley). If you are interested in the life and work of Margaret Mead, this book will give you some insight into Mead's own opinions of what she was observing that go beyond the objective descriptions found in her formal works.

Product Description:
The American anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978) was barely 24 years old when she left New York to study the natives of Samoa, New Guinea, and other remote Pacific islands. Anthropological research to her was not a dull academic discipline but an adventure in which every little detail, from Balinese ritual dances to Polynesian tattooing, held enormous fascination. Her 1928 book--Coming of Age in Samoa--made her both famous and controversial. She boldly challenged the most deeply ingrained principles of the Western way of life: family structure, education, and child-rearing. When she died in 1978, a Pacific tribe she befriended held a five-day ceremony in her honor normally reserved for their greatest chiefs. Joan Mark guides us through the most exciting anthropological discoveries of the 20th century while following Margaret Meads many triumphs around the globe in quick-paced, engrossing prose that reads like an adventure story.

Product Description:
In With a Daughter's Eye, writer and cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson looks back on her extraordinary childhood with two of the world's legendary anthropologists, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. This deeply human and illuminating portrait sheds new light on her parents' prodigious achievements and stands alone as an important contribution for scholars of Mead and Bateson. But for readers everywhere, this engaging, poignant, and powerful book is first and foremost a singularly candid memoir of a unique family by the only person who could have written it.



Customer Review: History of the Personal:
Margaret Mead was one of my heroines when I was growing up. How fascinating to read this biography which is a blend of intellectual and up close and personal history of her. To have her husband, Gregory Bateson included is icing on the cake. Mary Catherine has done an extremely creditble job. For example, she writes, "Margaret always emphasized the importance of recording first impressions . . . for . . . the informed eye has its own blindness as it begins to take for granted things that were initially bizarre." As I read of Margaret's reaction to Mary Catherine's wedding -- that it must be a format that reflected Margaret and Gregory's place in the world, rather than just the personal joy and celebration of a daughter, I had to wonder if Mary Catherine ever connected the above passage to her own children. This daughter writes with a fairly clear eye about her parents. They are neither great untouchable icons, nor are they flawed little humans. I suspect she did a great deal of balancing in her own emotions to come up with the portraits she painted because, in truth, we have three portraits here, all interconnected and somehow, ongoing. Not a superficial book.

Customer Review: One of the best!:
I enjoyed the careful description of two legendary lives observed by the author as a daughter and an anthropologist. As a piece of anthropological writing, a certain distance is maintained when the author tells of her memories of growing up with her parents and the relationship between them. Yet, I can still detect her sadness and love in the seemingly unemotional and impersonal writing style. Often, significant feelings are embedded in the scientific explaination of her parents' theories and ideas. I not only gained a better understanding of the field of anthropology, but also find the "differences" (such as different kinds of families, marriages, choices, ideas, personalities) that we encounter in life as descriped by the author enriching.

Product Description:
Between 1936 and 1938 Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead collected more than 1,200 paintings and sketches made by Balinese peasants.



Customer Review: Excellent book:
I am Balinese and enjoyed this book. It is a catalogue of Margaret Mead's and her husband Gregory Bateson's collection of paintings. They were in Bali off and on throughout the Thirties.

Batuan is a village in Central Bali, which is not far from my own village of Ubud. They are both artists' villages, but the painting styles are very different. Ubud has attracted a lot of foreigners, who have influenced the local artists. This was not the case with the painters in Batuan, who developed their own style.

Professor Hildred Geertz is a renowned anthropologist, who writes well, and explains the stories behind these paintings, which would otherwise be rather hard to follow. I think that some of the points she mentions are original and interesting.

Most of the painters are profiled with a short biography. Margaret Mead and Gregory Bates interviewed the painters and made notes. Some are charming and very personal, like the fact that Ida Bagus Made had been to a movie once.

Recommended.

Customer Review: Batuan Paintings of the transition period (1930-1942):
This is a definitive and well written book on Balinese paintings from the village of Batuan. This book serves as the exhibition catalog for the Batuan Painting exhibition from the collection of Bateson and Mead. Prof. Geertz illusively decribed the relationship between the Balinese culture, tradition and myth, the western influence and the development of Balinese Paintings. Highly recommended for the patrons and the students of Balinese Painting

Product Description:
This first collection of Margaret Mead's personal correspondence creates a vivid and intimate portrait of an American icon--with a foreword by Mead's daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson

Often far from home and loved ones, famed anthropologist Margaret Mead was a prolific letterwriter, always honing her writing skills and her ideas. To Cherish the Life of the World presents, for the first time, her personal and professional correspondence, which spanned sixty years. These letters lend insights into Mead's relationships with interconnected circles of family, friends, and colleagues, and reveal her thoughts on the nature of these relationships.

In these letters--drawn primarily from her papers at the Library of Congress--Mead ruminates on family, friendships, sexuality, marriage, children, and career. In midlife, at a low point, she wrote to a friend, "What I seem to need most is close, aware human relationships, which somehow reinstate my sense of myself, as no longer living 'in the season of the narrow heart.'" This collection is structured around these relationships, which were so integral to Mead's perspective on life. With a foreword by her daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, a renowned author and anthropologist in her own right, this volume of letters from Mead to those who shared her life and work offers new insight into a rich and deeply complex mind.