Product Description
Now more accessible and student-friendly in this full-color seventh edition, Cultural Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition explores how cultural creativity, human agency, and the material conditions of everyday life interact together to shape human cultural practices. It stresses contemporary applications and human narratives across cultures, focusing on how people bring meaning to the world and transform it through practical action. Offering solid coverage of traditional topics, the authors incorporate cutting-edge theory and explain complex ideas in accessible language. They pay special attention to issues of power and inequality in the contemporary world, including gender inequalities, racism, ethnic discrimination, nationalism, caste, and class.
Covering the material in fifteen concise chapters, Cultural Anthropology is ideal for introductory courses. It exposes students to alternative perspectives from non-anthropologists and indigenous peoples through "In Their Own Words" commentaries, and it provides ethnographic summaries of each society discussed at length in the text in "EthnoProfile" boxes. The text also features many pedagogical aids including key terms, a running glossary, chapter summaries, maps, and annotated suggestions for further reading. An Instructor's Manual and Computerized Test Bank and a Companion Website at www.oup.com/us/culturalanthro provide additional helpful resources, including a student guide with extensive study skill tips and chapter review tests. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Met Expectations
I received the book 4 days before the earliest possible date. I am very happy with how quickly it got to me. Also, the book was in the exact condition as described.
Overall, I am super pleased!

ASB102 TEXT MR. McCAIG-PHOENIX COLLEGE
I started reading the text in preparation for
Spring Semester '10 and it seems very interesting.
My instructor chose this book as opposed to another text that another instructor chose for her
class.
I like the ETHNO PROFILES--and the book is well-
written, I believe. and well-illustrated.
I won't know for sure about this product until
I get into it starting January 19, 2010

just as good as a used book from school, but cheaper
I am taking Anthro 201 and really only use the book for vocab. the one nice thing is that the book places definitions of each highlighted term at the bottom of the page for easy viewing ... Read more

Product Description

The only book that integrates the foundations and the most current innovations in the field from the ground up. Over the past twenty years, this field has rapidly evolved from the study of physical anthropology into biological anthropology, incorporating the evolutionary biology of humankind based on information from the fossil record and the human skeleton, genetics of individuals and of populations, our primate relatives, human adaptation, and human behavior .  Stanford combines the most up-to-date, comprehensive coverage of the foundations of the field with the modern innovations and discoveries.

Customer Reviews (3)

Book
I'm very excited i got this book. I would have had to pay almost $100 for it but since i bought it here i saved a ton. Awesome buy.

The book
The book is in the condition that was promised and got here on time. Thanks

A bit of family history revealed
Although published as a textbook for university students, this volume is an excellent read for anybody wishing to understand the course of evolution.The authors have assembled a wealth of material, organised it in an effective manner and presented it with outstanding prose skill.Lead author Craig Stanford, whose books on primate behaviour are well-known, is joined by neurologist and geneticist John Allen and anthropologist Susan Anton.The trio bringsmany years of experience to the task of explaining human origins.



After a brief introduction explaining what is meant by "Biological Anthropology", the authors provide a fine survey of the basic mechanisms of natural selection - DNA and genetics.Their depiction of how the genome is formed and how that structure builds the elements needed for natural selection to operate is an outstanding brief summary.Using available chemicals, DNA's mechanisms to build cells are explained, supplemented by vivid graphic images.From the process of cell building, the authors move on to show how the completed organism must deal with its environment, which includes other creatures, plant life and climate conditions through adaptation down succeeding generations.The authors describe the various factors leading to producing new species, isolation, elapsed time and new conditions.They also address the issue of how fossils and conditions are recorded in time and how researchers use a variety of techniques to determine age and place.



The species of concern, of course, are the primates.The sudden demise of the great reptiles that had ruled the Earth for over 150 million years opened new vistas for the life that survived the catastrophe.Little, fur-bearing creatures moved into niches that allowed rapid change.Many varieties emerged, but noteworthy among them were shrew-sized omnivores.Spreading over the land and forests, some of them developed new traits that would ultimately lead to us.The origin of the primates is lost in the mists of time, compounded by the paucity of fossils and lack of agreement on what typifies a "primate".The earliest proposed species bears the ungainly name of "Plesiadapiforms".The authors describe the traits suggesting these were our earliest ancestors, while explaining what is lacking to establish a firm identity.Each of the points they introduce is enhanced by the contending researchers' arguments over lineage.



Once past the vague beginnings, the team offers insights into how ape transformed into human.The physiological trends, such as jaw structure and teeth are outlined.Each of the fossil examples of pre-human hominids is examined critically with the important elements indicating its lineage in the human story assessed.From a lonely skull in a desert to remote caves, creatures that one day would lead to you and me are revealed.At some point, one or more of the ape-like animals stood upright.Demonstrating what a major step this was, with changes in spinal column, head position and posture, the new form proved to be even more adaptable than its predecessors.Not the least of the advantages gained, they note, is the ability to travel long distances with minimal energy expenditure.As much as we've learned, the authors remind us of the many questions remaining.The actual number of species, where and how they lived, and how many lineages did the ape ancestor lead to over the millennia?



Emerging "modern" forms bring new challenges in understanding.Although early apes sent offshoots out of Africa, it was the hominids that proved to be the most ambitious travellers.Homo erectus spent over a million years traversing Asia, leaving fossils in far-flung sites across the continent and in the islands southeast of the mainland.Their remains have been dated to as recently as 25 to 50 thousand years old.The recent find on the island of Flores suggest an even more recent descendant.A new species, Homo sapiens, and its own diaspora out of Africa follows.Its most significant aspect, the development of intelligence and language is thoroughly examined.A major change took place leading to the one species with the highest proportion of brain size to body weight.Coupled with changes in physiology, our species created a new form of intricate communication abilities.The brain also went through changes in organisation.Which factor made the greatest contribution to human behaviour patterns is the concluding segment of the book.It is that aspect of our history that remains most contentious and the authors examine the various views surrounding that issue.It's a fitting conclusion to this in-depth and comprehensive study.[stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada] ... Read more

Product Description
Focused on the appreciation of anthropology, the new edition of Anthropology: Appreciating Human Diversity offers an up-to-date holistic introduction to general anthropology from the four-field perspective. Key themes of appreciating the experiences students bring to the classroom, appreciating human diversity, and appreciating the field of anthropology are showcased throughout the text.In this edition, Understanding Ourselves chapter openers and Through the Eyes of Others boxes show how anthropology helps us understand ourselves. New Appreciating Diversity boxes focus on the various forms of human biological and cultural diversity.Appreciating Anthropology boxes are also new to the text and focus on the value and usefulness of anthropological research and approaches. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Exactly What I Wanted
It came on-time. It was packed well. It was in perfect condition. What More can one ask? ... Read more

Product Description
Comprehensive, readable and written for the student, Haviland/Prins/Walwrath's market-leading text, CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, is a highly relevant, high-quality teaching tool. The narrative voice of the text has been thoroughly internationalized and the "we:they" Western voice has been replaced with an inclusive one that will resonate with both Western and non-Western students and professors. In addition, gender, ethnicity, and stratification concepts and terminologies have been completely overhauled in accordance with contemporary thinking and the narrative streamlined using more fully developed, balanced, and global examples. In CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, the authors present students with examples of "local responses" to challenging globalization issues, designed to provide students with a "cross-cultural survival guide"for living in the diverse, multicultural world of the 21st century. This edition is a truly exciting and unique examination into the field of cultural anthropology, its insights, its relevance, and the continuing role of cultural survival issues. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Cultural Anthropology, 11th edition
This book is straightforward and easy to understand. Chapters are organized and vocabulary and main topics are summarized at the end of the book; sometimes I'd just read these parts and I would understand the entire chapter.

Education made affordable
My school bookstore wanted $95 for this text but I was able to get it for $5 here. Upon receipt (which was sooner than expected) I did a quick inspection and found the quality to be more than adequate as the book had the original, unopened discs. I couldn't be happier.

Just a book for class.
I did get a used book for a class.It is a great buy, I would've paid $148 for a new one at school, but I asked the teacher and he said this older edition would be fine, so I saved myself a ton of money.The book is in good condition, too.

Great read
Even though I needed this book for a class it was very interesting. Glad that my instructor chose it.It does not focus on one group of people, it shares information about a large number of various cultures across the world.

Curtral Anthropology in a Detailed Sense
I wouldn't have normally purchased this book if it wasn't for a course requirement. From chapter one all the way to the end, the authors take the reader or student through a detailed interface of what life is like experienced in other cultures. It touches upon the four different career interests in cultural anthropology as well. A time consuming read, but loaded with useful information for in and out of the class room.
... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Inspiring
Levi-Strauss ranks with Darwin for being hugely misunderstood. Like Darwin, what people say about Levi-Strauss is so often completely wrong that I strongly doubt he's ever really read.

Levi-Strauss believed that all cultures share the same basic characteristics. "Struturalism is the search for hidden harmonies," he said. One of my favorite quips from him is how interesting it is to see how the same personality type will be cast in different cultural roles--how the same basic humanity signifies radically different things to different cultures.

Levi-Strauss believed it is not important to try and figure out when a culture branched off from another, or what preceeded what: culture should be considered on its own terms. If a pot is interesting, it's interesting, no matter what its context.

The reason this physicist is curious about a dead anthropologist is that many of the misunderstandings of regular old evolution can be cleared up, as Saussure recommended, by considering both evolutionary history--how dinosaurs turned into birds--and evolutionary structure--why, at any given step in evolution, the dino-bird was best adapted to its enviornment. Gould has made a career out of clearing up this confusion; too bad our schools leave students in the dark.

And it's also interesting from the point of view of physics. Clouds, for instance, have a structure which is determined by wiggling water vapor. By looking at the shape of the clouds, we can determine just how the vapor is wiggling.

All cloud shapes can be predicted--not by solving deterministic physical laws (i.e. time evolution) but by making strucutral predictions based on guesses. It is a sort of physical law which corresponds to the structuralist view of evolution: at any given time, a cloud looks the way it does because it solves a kind of 'best fit' problem. It does *not* look that way because we can solve the time evolution; those equations are in principle unsolvable because the degrees of freedom is so high. The cause of cloud shape is not force or energy (which in physics are used to solve the time evolution of single or few bodies--vertical evolution), but information and order (which are used when the number of interacting elements is so high that only statistical arguments can be made--horizontal evolution).

A perfect example of structuralism was made by Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace. In it, he argued that the course of Russia's history was not written by Napoleon, and that following Napoleon's motivations (vertical evolution) gave one the illusion that he was in control of his own decisions. In fact, Russia's history was written by the sum total of its people, each influenced into their decisions by their immediate surroundings (horizontal evolution). History then emerges in the same manner as an ant society: one person puts down a pebble, only to have it picked up and put down again somewhere else, seemingly at random. Yet the colony has certain well-defined traits. In physics the colony would be said to be a self-organizing structure, what Stuart Kauffman calls 'order for free'. So too is human history, and attempting to ground it around Churchills and Napoleons is hen-picking.

Prigogine (a chemist) pointed Levi-Strauss out in his Nobel lecture. There's only a handful of people in the world who really understand why. I encourage you to find out!

PS: I remind the writer below of the Elements of Style rule: never enclose words in quotations, as though you were admitted to a secret world that knows better. Quotation marks are the authors' indication either that he knows the word he uses is poorly chosen, or that he doesn't actually know what it means.

Great work by a forerunner of Anthropology!
I personally consider this book to be one of the greatest works in the field of Anthropology. It is an exhaustive treatment on a particular way of looking at how Anthropology is performed. Through various examples fromdifferent cultures the author attempts to show how this *structural*approach to Anthropology is viewed. This book changed how many socialAnthropologists did their work. Written by one of the most pre-eminentAnthropologists of our time it will most undoubtly stand the test of timefor many decades to come. ... Read more

Product Description
Ideal for any Cultural Anthropology course, this brief and inexpensive collection of ethnographic case studies exposes students to fifteen different cultures. Culture Sketches introduces students to ethnography without overwhelming them with excessive reading material. Each sketch, or chapter, was selected for its relevance to students and for its ability to reflect the basic concepts found in introductory courses. All sketches follow a logical, consistent organization that makes it easy for students to understand major themes such as geography, myth creation, history, sociopolitical systems, and belief systems. The new edition offers a new chapter, "The Roma: Romanipe, Rights, and the Road Ahead", adding geographic breadth to the text. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Great book!
I had to buy this book for my anthropology class..... I really liked the book.It wasn't a difficult read, but gave the information in an easy to read yet fun way.

Easy reading
Book is split into small chapters with maps and photos.Very clear and to the point on each culture, pointing out the unique characteristics of each.Includes very interesting facts, especially about certain groups.Informative and educational while being easy to read, so I gave it 5 stars.

Great
The price for the book was very far and was delivered in the time allotment.

Interesting and Informative
Very interesting if you are like learning about the world's cultures. Tons of information and very understandable. Definitely recommend for the higher education seeker. :)

A Winner for College Course
This was "required" reading for my college course in Anthropology. It is well laid out, informative, and interesting if you have a real desire to learn about diverse cultures. As always, Amazon's delivery was quick and efficient. ... Read more

Product Description
Moore's Cultural Anthropology, Second Edition is an introduction to the study of cultures via an updated version of the community study/network method. Using a multiple institutional, holistic approach, his book is organized in five sections: understanding the human primate; band communities and elemental human institutions; tribes and emergent institutions; traditional civilizations; and the anthropology of modern life. This book is ideal for undergraduate introductory courses in cultural anthropology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

cultural anthropology: the field study of human beings
delivered promptly.condition of book exactly as seller described.would buy again from this seller.

hate this booook!
i had to get this book for a class and all it is is boring stories with some guy talking about studies done by some anthropologists and all he does is criticize them. hate the author. the seller is good though! ... Read more

Product Description
Ottenheimer's authoritative yet approachable introduction to the field's methodology, skills, techniques, tools, and applications emphasizes the kinds of questions that anthropologists ask about language ? and the kinds of questions that intrigue students. The text brings together the key areas of linguistic anthropology, addressing issues of power, race, gender, and class throughout. Further stressing the everyday relevance of the text material, Ottenheimer includes "In the Field" vignettes that draw you in to the chapter material via stories culled from her own and others' experiences, as well as "Doing Linguistic Anthropology" and "Cross- Language Miscommunication" features that describe real-life applications of text concepts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Highly recommended
The content is substantial, well organized, and visually appealing. The author does an outstanding job in connecting the material to real-life issues.

For use as a textbook, ideally it should have more exercises and questions for students. The "student activities" section at the end of each chapter merely points the reader to the companion workbook, which admittedly has some great stuff, but too often the exercises in it are just "go to these websites and write an essay about them".

hello, anyone there?
I needed to get in touch with the vendor who sold me this because the edition they sent was not the correct one, so now i have a book that is useless and no one to respond to me email. ... Read more

Product Description

Cultural Anthropology: A Global Perspective provides students with an introduction to cultural anthropology through a traditional holistic and integrative approach. Organized by societal type, this book's primary emphasis is on applied anthropology, with a strong coverage of globalization.

Customer Reviews (2)

Overall Good
Ordered it Tuesday, got it Friday.. Great shipping!Book is in good condition minus some highlighter marks and a slit in the front cover plus some pages.

Insightful educational text
This was a required text for my online Cultural Anthropology course and for an educational text it is quite interesting.I find the break down of each chapter to be rather appealing and logical and each chapter has a list of terms.My professor gives us many online and outside resources but this text gives the backbone reasoning behind each. ... Read more

Product Description
This concise introduction to biological anthropology discusses the core areas of the discipline within a unique framework modeled on the scientific method. Emphasizing themes and theories, the text presents facts as supportive evidence rather than dissociated pieces of information. Each chapter explores questions that get at the heart of the field, and then reexamines them in the same way that scientists generate and test hypotheses. Designed from its inception as a concise text, Biological Anthropology covers topics in a carefully managed level of detail, and offers examples of the everyday uses of biological anthropology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

precise and accurate
I really enjoythis book. The seller was precise and accurate when it came to deatais and shipping information.

Very Good Book!
This textbook is an easy, entertaining read. Nice, concise descriptions, clean layout, chapter summaries at the end of every chapter for the lazy reader. ... Read more

Product Description
This book offers a comprehensive and balanced presentation on views of human culture, evolution, and prehistory. The text presents the principles and processes of anthropology, both physical (biological) and cultural, including ethnology, linguistics, and prehistoric archaeology in an integrated, holistic manner. The book?s framework emphasizing the challenge of human survival, the connections between biology and culture, and the impact of globalization on peoples and cultures around the world, serves to unify the material. The authors integrate contemporary research and ideas from several schools of thought, and use a lively writing style to engage readers and keep them interested in ?real world? anthropology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Good, cheap option for a college student!
I was looking for Anthropology: The Human Challenge, 12th Ed. desperately the week before school started, and the college bookstore wanted $125, and some used textbook brokers were asking as much as $70 for used textbooks.I managed to snag it for $15 shipped and received it the day before class started, with plenty of time for me to look over it and notice that for about 10% of the new price, I got a textbook with minor cover bending, some highlighting (which can be helpful when cramming), and a few scuff marks.It is perfectly legible, and it was a great value.I will definitely go with Amazon next time I need a textbook for college.

anthropology text for high schoolers too!
I've used this book a couple of times for teaching either college freshmen or high school students and it is well-received.The readings are engaging and the authors bring in plenty of contemporary examples of uses for anthropology today.

Anthropolofy: The Human Challenge
Thanks, the book arrived in the time promised, early in fact. and in the condition promise. I amd very satisfied with the purchase. As far as the content, it is a school book and my opion on it would be just that an opion of if I like the subject or not.

Book of Opinions not a book of Science
The only strebgth of this text is its extensive coverage of the subject, but that is where the kudos end.

As a Paleontologist and Paleoantropologist I find that this is more about citing exampleas and then giving personal opinion, than the facts.I must say I agree with the review of "justice209" (Fargo, ND USA), that "I felt more and more like I was in church and not reading a college textbook."Many Intro courses in Anthropology use this text, probably more for the inclusive CD-ROM and InfoTrac than the text.This text should be supplemental reading for an Intro course, not required reading.I don't know if I would go so far as stating that W.A. Haviland is putting forth a political agenda, but I find this text lacking on scientific, with to many opinions put forth lacking any supportive fact.

Great Intro text.
This is a solid introductory text which competently handles and encyclopedic load of research in a way as to invites the novice to want to learn about human biology, history, culture within the unique naturalistic holism of academic anthropology.
Excerpt: Most anthropology instructors have two goals for their introductory classes: (1) to provide an overview of principles and processes of anthropology and (2) to plant a seed of awareness about human cultural and biological diversity in their students that will continue to grow and to challenge ethnocentrism long past the end of the semester. All eleven editions of Anthropology have tried to support and further these goals.
The majority of our students come to class intrigued with anthropology but with little more than a vague sense of what it is all about. The first and most obvious aim of the text, therefore, is to provide a comprehensive introduction to the discipline-its fundamental principles and key concepts. Drawing from the research and ideas of a number of schools of anthropological thought, this book exposes students to a mix of theoretical perspectives-in human evolution and human ecology, as well as theories about culture such as functionalism, structuralism, cultural materialism, and world systems theory. Such inclusiveness reflects our conviction that different approaches all reveal important insights about human behavior, biology, and beliefs. To employ the tools of a single approach at the expense of all others is to cut oneself off from significant insights.
... Read more

Product Description
Anthropology: A Global Perspective introduces students to the four fields of anthropology. This text integrates historical, biological, archaeological, and global approaches with ethnographic data available from around the world. Information is drawn from both classic and recent research in the field and reflects the current state-of-the-art understanding of social and cultural changes. Using an applied perspective, Anthropology: A Global Perspective demonstrates how anthropologists use research techniques and methods to help solve practical problems, thus showing students how anthropology is relevant to improving human societies. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Decent book, great price
The book took a little while to arrive, but it was in the specified condition and you can't beat the $50, give or take, that you save from not buying on campus. ... Read more

Product Description
In this invigorating mix of natural history and adventure, artist-naturalist Ellen Meloy uses turquoise—the color and the gem—to probe deeper into our profound human attachment to landscape.

From the Sierra Nevada, the Mojave Desert, the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Bahamas to her home ground on the high plateaus and deep canyons of the Southwest, we journey with Meloy through vistas of both great beauty and great desecration.Her keen vision makes us look anew at ancestral mountains, turquoise seas, and even motel swimming pools.She introduces us to Navajo “velvet grandmothers” whose attire and aesthetics absorb the vivid palette of their homeland, as well as to Persians who consider turquoise the life-saving equivalent of a bullet-proof vest.Throughout, Meloy invites us to appreciate along with her the endless surprises in all of life and celebrates the seduction to be found in our visual surroundings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Pager turner? --> No.Page savorer -->YES!!
This book moved me deeply - many times, at surprising moments, and about a dizzying array of topics.

It's impossible to breeze through this book.One Amazon reviewer described it as "lyrical"; another "like poetry."I'd agree with both - "prose-etry" if that's a word?While reading this book, MANY MANY times, I had to stop after a paragraph, catch my breath, re-read it - then put the book down altogether because the passages were so insightful, thought-provoking, and beautiful.

About crossing the Mojave:"the heat and aridity can kill you, and if they do not, you might die from the intimidating despair evoked by a vast emptiness that is wholly indifferent to your existence."About wearing heirloom pearl necklace:"...I wear the pearls with sun-bleached cotton shirts on strolls to visit cliffrose in bloom, renewing their luster with my skin, remembering a stalwart lineage of pearl-wearers, their necks bearing strands of perfectly matched spheres on every occasion that mattered in their lives, from college graduation to tea dances for the war effort and weddings in dresses the color of gardenias...."

Ellen Meloy doesn't just SEE color, she FEELS it; it provokes emotional connections - as does the contrast of one color against another - and she's able to describe it in a way that made me feel like I'm listening to someone talk about visiting another dimension.It also made me wonder, "I see color, why have I missed all that?"That's why we have writers.She has an uncanny ability to weave poetry with prose, her own intense connection with color, cultural observations, and humankind's connection to the planet into a sentence that stopped me in my tracks.Scores of times - literally.Her life's experience includes the desert, rafting, and a sojourn to the Caribbean and her learning about family history intertwined with slavery.

As I was reading this book, I kept thinking, "I have GOT to meet this woman.And I have GOT to own something she has painted with her own hands."Alas, in doing research about an hour after I finished the book (and I'm a procrastinator!), I was deeply saddened to learn that she is no longer with us.

I'd put this book in my top 10, and would recommend it to anyone.It would be great for a book club - but I'd recommend more than one session to discuss it!Get a copy, find a quiet spot, pour yourself a cup of tea or glass of wine, and savor each page.Prepare to"read, rinse, repeat" - because you won't be able to breeze through this book.You won't want to - you'll want to savor every page.

Amazement as the highest goal
Ellen Meloy quotes Goethe, "The highest goal that man can achieve is amazement." The Anthropology of Turquoise leaves the reader amazed, by her rich and vivid prose, and by how it urges us to engage the natural world around us with fresh, hungry senses.

Meloy decries American's "entrenched national resistance to anything the least bit inconvenient or uncomfortable," but her emphasis, overall, is affirmation not critique. So she describes our brains as a "three-pound mass of neurons wired for an organic, sensory relationship to place... We are blood-tied to landscape by the language of cells. Although we may be hell-bent for metaphysical starvation, trying with all our might to surrender our sensory intelligence to technology and massive artifice, it will take time for these million-years-old senses to atrophy, to go the way of our tail, devolved to a bony nub. In the meantime here we are staggering about the diminishing wilds, greedy to feed those ossifying lobes with light."

Anthropology of Turquoise takes its place, along with her final book, Eating Stone, among my very most favorite books of all time

At times almost poetical
I stumbled on this book during one of those periods in which I become overwhelmed by an urge to go and sit in the desert. Such feelings come to me from time to time. Unfortunately this wasn't practical at the time so I sought to satisfy my longing vicariously. Hence my browsing Amazon and my discovery of this book. Prior to that time I had never heard of the author or her book.

It's difficult to categorize this book. The best that I can do is describe it. It is a collection of essays in which the author muses about various geologies, mostly the southwest, her feelings about the outdoors and her relationship with color. But there are many, many digressions including such subjects as her personal history and the social/political nature of Utah. For the most part I found these digressions enjoyable. Like others have commented I found many passages in which her prose is almost poetical. There are sentences, paragraphs and whole pages that one is tempted to read out loud to anyone who would care to listen. But there are also times that the flights of fancy become a little bit too personal, a little bit too abstruse. It is for this reason that I give it only four stars.

Having said that I would still recommend this book. It is best read when one is in a quiet frame of mind, with no expectation of plot or narrative. As such it fulfilled my desire to go and sit in the desert without leaving home. And I came to appreciate the author's approach to life, her love of nature, her love of being alone and her sometimes irreverent habit of contrasting the lyricism of the desert with the more humorous and profane aspects of life. Doing so only helps one appreciate to totality of life.

At times I found myself wondering why anyone would feel compelled to write such a book. I'm sure the author would reply that a writer writes because she has to. Writing is an indispensable part of the author's life. A life that the reader comes to share. Perhaps this is why, when I discovered half way through the book that the author had died unexpectedly in 2004 at the age of 58, that I felt a pain inside.

I'll probably read another book by Ellen Meloy. Hopefully while sitting on a mesa somewhere. With no expectations.

As Beautifully written as the color
This lyrical, beautifully written book shows the author's love for not only the desert regions of the Southwest, but also for the color turquoise, the color of our skies and the color of the stone lovingly set in the jewelry that defines the region.

You will learn to appreciate tiny details about living in the desert, and you will come to see the land and its beauty through a new light, colored, of course, by shades of turquoise.

Enjoy!

a sense of the southwest
No one writes the feel of the southest like Ellen Meloy. Reading her is second only to being there. ... Read more

Product Description
Accessible and authoritative: the #1 text in physical anthropology.Author Clark Larsen, a leading figure in the field and a teacher at The Ohio State University, knows firsthand the level of detail that students need to grasp the major concepts. With even more of the unparalleled art and thoughtful pedagogy found in the First Edition, coverage of the latest discoveries and theories, and expanded treatment of several key topics, Our Origins, Second Edition, provides students with the tools they need to visualize and remember key concepts and to answer the “Big Questions” in physical anthropology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Anthropology Dream
What a great book. Great experience with the physical condition bought on Amazon, and the literary marvel within its pages. Another purchase well made...

Excellent anthro text book
I purchased this book for a class I will take - the class hasn't started yet, but I'm on chapter 6 of the book - very interesting, well written book.The way the pages are set up makes the reader want to read every word.

Great Buy
This textbook was fairly cheap and it is in perfect condition, so I have no complaints.

Well planned and easy to understand
Compared to some anthropology textbooks this one is quite easy to read.It is a first edition so it has a couple minor errors, but nothing too bad.It also doesn't explain some of the contentious points of anthropology, which may confuse some who stumble upon them through research, but I guess that is inevitable for a beginning book.

Not bad overall, and far cheaper on amazon than through the university bookstore :) ... Read more

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Product Description
The #1 text in physical anthropology, now in a brief edition.With the same unparalleled art and inquiry-based pedagogy as the best-selling Our Origins, Essentials of Physical Anthropology is the ideal text for focusing students’ attention on what really matters and why. Author Clark Larsen, one of the world’s leading physical anthropologists, has worked hard to develop a tight narrative, covering only the most pertinent, most up-to-date information that students should know. Pedagogical features in every chapter keep students focused on the core concepts and “big questions” in physical anthropology. An extensive art program, including figures, photos, maps, and bubble captions, brings concepts to life.
... Read more

Product Description
The Dictionary of Anthropology is designed to become the standard reference guide to the discipline of social and cultural anthropology. Its core consists of substantial analytical articles focusing on key anthropological concepts, theories and methodologies. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Dictionary of Anthropology, Barfield (1997)
Barfield provides concise but fairly nuanced summaries of a broad selection of significant terms and themes in sociocultural anthropology. I have recommended it as a supplementary resource for upper-level undergraduates in classical theory as well as thematic courses for several years. It hasn't been updated since 1997, which is a shame, but it is nonetheless an excellent desk reference. I'd love to see a new edition of this book. Note that the cross-references at the end of most entries point the reader to additional pages that often provide relevant information.

Rebuttal
I have found this book to be extremely helpful in my graduate studies in anthropology (M.A., Ph.D. at Michigan State University). I don't know what the reviewer means by calling this book an "[...] attempt to legitimize anthropology." Those of us practicing anthropology (not to mention all those that have practiced it in the last 100 years or so), know that anthropology is very "legitimate" and essential to the future of the social sciences within the modern academy. No general reference book is perfect, but I highly recommend this as a refresher for general anthropological concepts.

Don't bother
This dictionary is just another long-winded, pretentious, unreadable, high-brow attempt to legitimize anthropology. The authors of each definition are more concerned with impressing their peers than giving the average person clear insight to cultural anthropology. If you are struggling through a cultural anthropology class, and are looking for a dictionary with clear definitions, forget this book.

The Dictionary of Anghropology
I have this book since I purchased in April 1999 and has been a very handyresource for me whenever I need it. This dictionary has been very helpfulfor me to pinpoint terminologies which sometimes left vauge in my mindsince I left the department of anthropologies during my graduate studiesquite a long time ago. As a reference book I don't use it every day butit's always a part of my collection and ready whenever I need it.

Thismorning I discovered that something is missing in this book. Alldictionaries I have alway started from A to Z. Whatever happened to thisbook, by accident or by design, this dictionary doesn't have any wordstarted with letter X, Y and Z. It has only words from A to W which remindsme to a brand name of Rootbeer A&W.

I checked the page number on thelast word of letter W. It is page 501. Then on page 502 it starts withBibliografy and ends on page 626, a long 124 pages of A to Z author'sname.

My question to the Editor Thomas Barfield and/or the PublisherBlackwell Publisher, Ltd is what's happening to the words starting with X,Y, and Z? ... Read more

Product Description
Cultural Anthropology, provides both a comprehensive and scientific introduction to cultural anthropology.  It helps the reader understand how humans vary culturally and why they got to be that way.   This new edition also highlights migration and immigration in the context of globalization. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Cultural Anthropology (13th Edition) (MyAnthroLab Series)
Nice book,very interesting for those who want to know more about human beings and their history.... ... Read more

Product Description
An Anthropology of Biomedicine is an exciting new introduction to biomedicine and its global implications. Focusing on the ways in which the application of biomedical technologies bring about radical changes to societies at large, cultural anthropologist Margaret Lock and her co-author physician and medical anthropologist Vinh-Kim Nguyen develop and integrate the thesis that the human body in health and illness is the elusive product of nature and culture that refuses to be pinned down.

• Introduces biomedicine from an anthropological perspective, exploring the entanglement of material bodies with history, environment, culture, and politics
• Develops and integrates an original theory: that the human body in health and illness is not an ontological given but a moveable, malleable entity
• Makes extensive use of historical and contemporary ethnographic materials around the globe to illustrate the importance of this methodological approach
• Integrates key new research data with more classical material, covering the management of epidemics, famines, fertility and birth, by military doctors from colonial times on
• Uses numerous case studies to illustrate concepts such as the global commodification of human bodies and body parts, modern forms of population, and the extension of biomedical technologies into domestic and intimate domains

Product Description

Integrating current material on globalization, gender, class, race, ethnicity, and other contemporary social issues throughout the book, Barbara Miller's Cultural Anthropology in a Globalizing World  text engages students with compelling ethnographic examples and demonstrates the relevance of cultural anthropology to their lives.

• Rich examples of gender, ethnicity, race, class, and age thread through the topical coverage of economic systems, the life-cycle, health, kinship, social organization, politics, language, religion, and expressive culture.
• Each chapter highlights applied anthropology and provides students with practical tips about how they can use anthropology in their everyday lives.
• The last two chapters address the urgent issues of how migration is changing world cultures and the importance of local cultural values in shaping international development policies and programs.

This book, based on Miller’s full-length Cultural Anthropology  text, will generate class discussion, increase faculty-student engagement, and enhance student learning. Through clear writing, a balanced theoretical approach, and engaging examples, Miller stresses the importance of social inequality, cultural change, and applied aspects of anthropology throughout the book.

Customer Reviews (1)

Cultural Anthropology
The book was good, I ordered for a friend of mine and she enjoyed it.It helped her to pass her course at the university that we go to.Thank you amazon. ... Read more