Margaret Mead: A Biography

(Hardback)

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Description

The anthropologist Margaret Mead garnered fame and generated controversy in a full life that spanned most of the 20th century. She was a maverick with a strong and sometimes difficult personality, and this biography follows her from childhood years in Pennsylvania, to college days with her pals nicknamed the Ash Can Cats, to tutelage under the preeminent anthropologist, Franz Boas, at Columbia, and her fieldwork in the South Pacific, starting in Samoa when she was 22 years of age. Private and public are interwoven, with coverage of her marriages, close friendships, writings, and career progression. Mead has special appeal to teens because of her work with and theories on this age group. Readers will be inspired by Mead's individualism and career in anthropology in its golden age. They will also appreciate the insights into her writings, including her autobiography. Mead's viewpoints on myriad topics are presented, with a final note on her impact and an imagining of what she would say about the world today. A chronology and glossary supplement the text.

Reviews

Students will find here a thorough account of the life of Mead (1901-1978), including her publication in 1928 of Coming of Age in Samoa, her three marriages and divorces, and her increasing presence as a world figure, with the occasional controversies that went along with it.-Multicultural Review
"Students will find here a thorough account of the life of Mead (1901-1978), including her publication in 1928 of Coming of Age in Samoa, her three marriages and divorces, and her increasing presence as a world figure, with the occasional controversies that went along with it."-Multicultural Review

Author Bio

MARY BOWMAN-KRUHM teaches at Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies in Business Education. She is the author of more than 30 books for children and young adults.