Customer Reviews

Anthropology: The Human Challenge

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I couldn't disagree more with the previous reviewer and felt the need to add my review to explain the absurdity of theirs. This book is very insighful, interesting, and makes perfect sense. Quite a bit of the writers opinions are included, but that is the case with most books on the social sciences. It is almost an unavoidable reality that the author will flavor the text with their own personal experience. The previous reviewer (a mathematician) seems more intent on discrediting Anthropology as a science than presenting the real facts. If one is truly interested in gleaning a generalized view of all the anthropological disciplines from one text, this book comes highly recommended.

It was a purchase for college. A required text book. Granted it does have some interesting information in it, but its still one of those books im forced to read. Im pretty sure if youre buying this book its for a class so youre probably going to buy it reguardless of any review.

I've used this book a couple of times for teaching either college freshmen or high school students and it is well-received. The readings are engaging and the authors bring in plenty of contemporary examples of uses for anthropology today.

I was looking for Anthropology: The Human Challenge, 12th Ed. desperately the week before school started, and the college bookstore wanted $125, and some used textbook brokers were asking as much as $70 for used textbooks. I managed to snag it for $15 shipped and received it the day before class started, with plenty of time for me to look over it and notice that for about 10% of the new price, I got a textbook with minor cover bending, some highlighting (which can be helpful when cramming), and a few scuff marks. It is perfectly legible, and it was a great value. I will definitely go with Amazon next time I need a textbook for college.

This is a solid introductory text which competently handles and encyclopedic load of research in a way as to invites the novice to want to learn about human biology, history, culture within the unique naturalistic holism of academic anthropology.
Excerpt: Most anthropology instructors have two goals for their introductory classes: (1) to provide an overview of principles and processes of anthropology and (2) to plant a seed of awareness about human cultural and biological diversity in their students that will continue to grow and to challenge ethnocentrism long past the end of the semester. All eleven editions of Anthropology have tried to support and further these goals.
The majority of our students come to class intrigued with anthropology but with little more than a vague sense of what it is all about. The first and most obvious aim of the text, therefore, is to provide a comprehensive introduction to the discipline-its fundamental principles and key concepts. Drawing from the research and ideas of a number of schools of anthropological thought, this book exposes students to a mix of theoretical perspectives-in human evolution and human ecology, as well as theories about culture such as functionalism, structuralism, cultural materialism, and world systems theory. Such inclusiveness reflects our conviction that different approaches all reveal important insights about human behavior, biology, and beliefs. To employ the tools of a single approach at the expense of all others is to cut oneself off from significant insights.

My son waited to tell me he needed this book. Shipped quickly and received within 2 business days. Have ordered books for my son, my daughter and myself. Awesome

I obviously should have read the description more carefully prior to purchase because I missed this part: "In some cases, individual items such as ancillary images or multimedia have been removed for digital delivery due to rights restrictions."

Turns out those images are necessary for at least one classroom activity. I'm trying to decide whether to "return" the book or not and am very disappointed as I was looking forward to the convenience of not having to lug around the physical version. This was my first textbook purchase on Kindle and I'm not off to a good start here.

Thanks, the book arrived in the time promised, early in fact. and in the condition promise. I amd very satisfied with the purchase. As far as the content, it is a school book and my opion on it would be just that an opion of if I like the subject or not.

Being a mathematician taking an anthropology course is strange in its own right, but every time I was forced to read Haviland's text I felt more and more like I was in church and not reading a college textbook. In my field, we can either prove or disprove things, and people's opinions are rarely an issue. However, in the so-called social "sciences" this is not the case, and Haviland's book only compounds this problem. This book is absolutely painful to read, since everything is about what Haviland believes to be the "right" theory. Little evidence supporting other theories, no matter how widely-accepted, is presented. Instead, he fills page after page tearing apart other peoples' theories (and particularly enjoys to point out how older theories were flawed, even when it doesn't fit within the flow of the chapter). He often repeats himself to the point of being repetitively redundant. For example, in the early chapters on human origins, he beats to death the idea that differences between humans and other primates are "differences of degree, not kind". One would hope that a typical college freshman could understand this concept after the first ten times they're hit with it, but apparently Haviland disagrees. The book, like all introductory college texts, is full of meaningless photographs and figures. Of particular interest are the bell curve-like figures supposedly showing distributions of characteristics in human ancestors. As a mathematician, I still can't make any sense out of these figures, which don't have any meaningful scale attached and have completely unenlightening captions. Haviland's examples are also quite weak and do little to shore up his arguments. He has a few pet examples (e.g., intersexuals and transexuals in Native American culture) that come up chapter after chapter after chapter without doing one thing to strengthen his arguments. In fact, it seems that most of his examples only exist to further his own political agenda, which I hope he is not trying to hide, for if he is, he has failed miserably. In fact, a reviewer of an earlier edition of this text claimed that reading Haviland's book made her want to go out and change the world. Last time I checked, the point of an introductory anthropology course is to teach students about human culture at all times and in all places (to steal another favorite phrase of these so-called "scientists") and not to point out injustices throughout the history of the world. Another serious problem with this text is that, despite being a tenth edition, it exhibits the total lack of editing that I would expect in a first edition. There are far too many sentences that I read, reread, and then puzzled over how it was supposed to be grammatically correct. Additionally, he "defined" at least one adjective (polytypic) by giving a definition for a noun.

If you're an instructor, please, please, please stay away from this text. If you're a student, you might want to consider changing sections to one with a different textbook unless your instructor is known for giving good notes, as this text will not hlep you learn and will only make you frustrated.

The only strebgth of this text is its extensive coverage of the subject, but that is where the kudos end.

As a Paleontologist and Paleoantropologist I find that this is more about citing exampleas and then giving personal opinion, than the facts. I must say I agree with the review of "justice209" (Fargo, ND USA), that "I felt more and more like I was in church and not reading a college textbook." Many Intro courses in Anthropology use this text, probably more for the inclusive CD-ROM and InfoTrac than the text. This text should be supplemental reading for an Intro course, not required reading. I don't know if I would go so far as stating that W.A. Haviland is putting forth a political agenda, but I find this text lacking on scientific, with to many opinions put forth lacking any supportive fact.