Adam Kuper writes:

Certainly by comparison with the contemporary studies of Malinowski – or even of Fortune – her research was patchy and her findings were not always reliable. But perhaps more damaging was her penchant for imposing patterns, putting things into boxes. It was a proclivity that in a sense served her well after the war, when she became an American guru, with neat solutions to every problem, from the legalisation of marijuana to the future of the planet. In the 1990s a postmodernist movement in American anthropology urged ethnographers to implicate themselves in their studies. Margaret Mead had already done so. Every ethnographic issue and every theoretical problem she addressed was inspired, in large part, by a drive to find out something about herself. Her example is not altogether encouraging, but she makes an interesting subject. These fascinating, beautifully edited letters bring out the unity of her life and her work.

(LRB 24 May 2007)

Basic | hardback 429 pp. |ISBN: 9780465008155