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 le[...]

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 w[...]

"Engaging . . . a fine biography that gets beyond the public icon to a portrait of the real woman."--Chicago Sun-Times

At the age of twenty-three, in the 1920s, Margaret Mead traveled alone to the South Sea and wrote of adolescent sexuality and guilt-free love in her now classic Coming of Ag[...]

Rarely do science and literature come together in the same book. When they do -- as in Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, for example -- they become classics, quoted and studied by scholars and the general public alike.Margaret Mead accomplished this remarkable feat not once but several time[...]

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

The United States on the eve of the Second World War was still a society largely isolated from the world. Facing enemies with unfamiliar cultural traditions, the U.S. government turned to anthropologists for insight. The result was a research effort that continued long after the war, aimed, in the w[...]