Description
Book SynopsisPresents a biography of Ruth Benedict, the renowned anthropologist, by her student, drawing on her correspondence and work with Margaret Mead, and on course notes. This book finds the ordering patterns in the materials Benedict left in her papers and shows that she was embarking on new interpretive directions in the last decade of her life.
Trade Review“This new and detailed biography offers many reasons why [Ruth Benedict] left such a persisting legacy in our field. . . . The book presents a much more rounded view of her contribution to the field than has been available before, largely through the thinking she presented to her students and colleagues. Even more valuable for future research is that almost half of the book is made up of the raw data on which it draws. Course ‘texts’ and references are available up until early in the year she died, and Young has certainly brought us a wonderful insight into the almost daily thinking of an extraordinary scholar.”—Joy Hendry,
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
