Margaret Mead and her second husband, Reo Fortune, spent nearly two years in the interior of New Guinea between 1931 and 1933. Just 29 years old when they set out, Mead had already published two bestselling books, Coming of Age in Samoa and Growing up in New Guinea. Fortune, a highly competitive, paranoid and occasionally violent New Zealander, had yet to make his name as an anthropologist. Conditions in the field were rough, sometimes dangerous. They both had recurrent bouts of malaria. And they became thoroughly fed up with each other.

LRB 24 May 2007 | PDF Download