"The key ideas of 25 major theorists are briefly described and—unique to this textbook—linked to the biographical and fieldwork experiences that helped shape their theories."

"The twenty-nine poignant fieldwork tales collected here reveal much about what anthropology can teach about others as well as ourselves, the spirit of the ethnographic enterprise, and issues of crosscultural humanity and humaneness."

"Ruth Underhill's intriguing memoir traces the story of her life, delving into the Depression, the famous anthropologists in her circle, and her fieldwork with a keen ethnographic eye."

Examines the work of Bronislaw Malinowski, who studied the people of the Trobriands, a group of Pacific Islands, altering the idea that native peoples were primitive savages.

Profile of the German physicist who was responsible for shaping the course of American anthropology, by bringing discipline and order to a field that had previously dealt in subjective "race classification."

This documentary traces the career of Melville J. Herskovits, the pioneering American anthropologist of African Studies and controversial intellectual who established the first African Studies Center at an American university and authored The Myth of the Negro Past.