Anthropology

Anthropology

• General
• Cultural
• Physical

The Anthropology of Globalization : A Reader (Blackwell Readers in Anthropology)
by Jonathan Xavier Inda (Editor), Renato Rosaldo (Editor)
(Paperback)

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Listed under World History

The Power of Myth
by Joseph Campbell, et al
(Paperback -- July 1991)

Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women
by Geraldine Brooks
Listed under Islam

The 10 Lenses: Your Guide to Living & Working in a Multicultural World
by Mark A. Williams, et al
(Paperback -- October 31, )
 

	Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes by Steve Olson (Hardcover -- May 15, )

	Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress by Lawrence E. Harrison (Editor), Samuel P. Huntington (Editor) (Paperback -- April 3, )

Nest in the wind: adventures in anthropology on a tropical island. 
by Martha C. Ward
Personal account of one woman's stay on the island. 
On a magnificent island in the middle of the Pacific lives a people who eat dogs, grow quarter-ton yams in secret, stage extraordinarily dramatic feasts, have exceptionally relaxed attitudes about sex, and ritually share a potent drink called kava. Nest in the Wind is a very personal record of the field experiences of a female anthropologist who managed a scientific research project on the lush, tropical island of Pohnpei in the early 1970s
Listed under Pohnpei

The Origin of Species
by Charles Darwin, Greg Suriano (Editor)
Listed under Darwin

Fingerprints of the Gods
by Graham Hancock, Santha Faiia (Photographer)
Paperback: 578 pages
Crown Pub; ISBN: 0517887290; Reissue edition

Brown: The Last Discovery of America
by Richard Rodriguez
(Hardcover -- March 28, )

The Seven Daughters of Eve
by Bryan Sykes
(Paperback -- May )
 

	Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal by Jared Diamond (Paperback -- February 1993)

Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer
by David Winner
Listed under Dutch History
 

	A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis by David M. Friedman (Hardcover -- October 30, )

Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago
by Lealan Jones, et al
This heartbreaking and inspiring book goes a long way toward fulfilling the wish one of its authors, LeAlan Jones, makes in his epigraph: "You must learn our America as we must learn your America, so that, maybe, someday, we can become one." Based on hours and hours of taped interviews that Jones and Lloyd Newman, two high school students, conducted for two National Public Radio documentaries they prepared in 1993 and 1995, Our America is a no-holds-barred look at the devastatingly poor Chicago neighborhood in which they live. It's a world where elementary school students learn about sex and drugs before they learn how to read, and where many boys do not expect to live to be 20. You finish the book marveling not that so many of those who people it are trapped, but wondering that anyone survives at all. Amazon.com
Paperback: 208 pages
Washington Square Pr; ISBN: 0671004646;

Diffusion of Innovations
by Everett M. Rogers (Preface)
Paperback: 519 pages
Free Press; ISBN: 0029266718; 4th edition

The Collapse of the Common Good: How America's Lawsuit Culture Undermines Our Freedom
by Philip K. Howard
Author Philip K. Howard returns with the same storytelling style and supreme reasonableness that made his first book, The Death of Common Sense, such a smash hit in 1995. He begins The Lost Art of Drawing the Line by noting the damage predatory litigation has done to the communal fabric of the United States: "Social relations in America, far from steadied by law's sure hand, are a tangle of frayed legal nerves." He tells how seesaws have started to vanish from playgrounds, how teachers are banned from touching students, and how emergency-room staff are blocked from attending to patients off hospital grounds--even if they can see them bleeding to death just 30 feet away. These aren't just speculations, a parade of hypothetical horror stories--they are actual trends and events that Howard describes and documents. The ability to weave dozens of anecdotes like these into his narrative is one of Howard's great strengths, and it allows him to make important points in entertaining ways.

Yet the book is much more than a collection of outrageous stories or a mere broadside against the legal system--though the legal system does come in for plenty of criticism. Instead, it's a meditation on the meaning of freedom, why freedom cannot exist outside of authority, and why individuals in positions of authority should have the ability to make decisions based on sound judgment. There is a temptation to secure liberty by restricting authority through the law, but this can be overdone, and it carries a high price: "Put law or any other formal construct in the middle of daily dealings, and people will start looking to the law instead of to one another." Then things get much worse: "The more our common institutions fail us, the more Americans want to limit their authority. Through a downward cycle of distrust, legal controls, [and] worse failure ... we drive Americans' governing institutions further into the bureaucratic maw." That is a terrible place to be, where no one is held accountable and antisocial behavior rules. And it has nothing at all to do with freedom. --John J. Miller - Amazon.com
Paperback: Ballantine Books (Trd Pap); ISBN: 034543871X; (January 29, )

The Dawn of Human Culture
by Richard G. Klein, Blake Edgar 
(Hardcover -- March 29, )

The Clustered World : How We Live, What We Buy, and What It All Means About Who We Are
by Michael J. Weiss
"Primary age group: 35-64... Median household income: $80,600... Median home value: $247,000... Predominant ideology: moderate Republican... Preferences: car phones, domestic wine, Land Rovers."

If this sounds like you, then you're a part of what's known as the "Winner's Circle" cluster. If not, then you probably fall into one of 61 other lifestyle clusters with names such as "Urban Gold Coast," "Pools & Patios," "God's Country," "Golden Ponds," and "Shotguns & Pickups." In The Clustered World, demographic detective Michael Weiss draws on the work of market research firm Claritas and its PRIZM cluster system to render a richly detailed view of the many neighborhoods and demographic segments that make up the United States. According to Weiss, the image of America as a melting pot is simply inaccurate--think salad bar, instead. He writes, "For a nation that's always valued community, this breakup of the mass market into balkanized population segments is as momentous as the collapse of Communism.... Today, the country's new motto should be 'E pluribus pluriba': 'Out of many, many.'" 

In addition to explaining the cluster concept, Weiss shows how marketers can put clusters to work to understand consumers better and sell everything from college educations to Dodge Caravans. Weiss also looks beyond the U.S. population to lifestyle clusters in Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, South Africa, and Spain. Marketers and social observers will find this pointillist view incredibly useful and perhaps a little disturbing. The overriding truth behind The Clustered World is that, like it or not, "You are like your neighbors." And in case you're wondering what cluster you belong to, Weiss includes the URL for the Claritas Web site (yawyl.claritas.com), where you can enter your ZIP code to find out more about you and your neighbors. --Harry C. Edwards - Amazon.com
Hardcover: 384 pages
Little Brown & Company; ISBN: 0316929204; 1st edition (December 15, )

Chinese Business Etiquette: A Guide to Protocol, Manners, and Culture in the People's Republic of China
by Scott D. Seligman, Edward J. Trenn (Illustrator)
(Paperback -- March )
 

The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore Forword by Richard Dawkins In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins proposed the concept of the meme as a unit of culture, spread by imitation. Now Dawkins himself says of Susan Blackmore:  Showing greater courage and intellectual chutzpah than I have ever aspired to, she deploys her memetic forces in a brave--do not think foolhardy until you have read it--assault on the deepest questions of all: What is a self? What am I? Where am I? ... Any theory deserves to be given its best shot, and that is what Susan Blackmore has given the theory of the meme.  Blackmore is a parapsychologist who rejects the paranormal, a skeptical investigator of near-death experiences, and a practitioner of Zen. Her explanation of the science of the meme (memetics) is rigorously Darwinian. Because she is a careful thinker (though by no means dull or conventional), the reader ends up with a good idea of what memetics explains well and what it doesn't, and with many ideas about how it can be tested--the very hallmark of an excellent science book. Blackmore's discussion of the "memeplexes" of religion and of the self are sure to be controversial, but she is (as Dawkins says) enormously honest and brave to make a connection between scientific ideas and how one should live one's life. --Mary Ellen Curtin - Amazon.com Paperback: 288 pages Oxford University Press; ISBN: 019286212X;

Cultures and Organizations
by Geert Hofstede
Paperback: 279 pages
McGraw-Hill Trade; ISBN: 0070293074; Revised edition (October 1, )
 

	Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass by Theodore Dalrymple (Hardcover -- November )

	Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Post-Contemporary Interventions) by Brian Massumi (Paperback -- June )

Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts
by Andrew Robinson
(Hardcover -- April 25, )

The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age
by Simon Schama
Listed under Dutch History
 
 
 
 

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