Letters from the Field, 1925-1975 [Paperback]

Margaret Mead (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 23, 2001

Margaret Mead was famous for keeping in touch with a wide circle of friends as we see in this collection of wonderfully revealing correspondence from the field. Written over a period of half a century, these letters to friends, family, and colleagues detail her first fieldwork in Samoa and go on to record her now famous anthropological endeavors in mainland New Guinea, the Admiralty Islands, and Bali. Enhanced by photographs, these intelligent, vivid, frequently funny, and often poetic letters tell us much about Mead's passion for and understanding of preliterate cultures. But they are equally valuable as a fundamental text on the science -- and art -- of anthropology. This edition, prepared for the centennial of Mead's birth, features introductions by Jan Morris and Mead's daughter. Mary Catherine Bateson.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Margaret Mead (1901-1978) began her remarkable career when she visited Samoa at the age of twenty-three, which led to her first book, Coming of Age in Samoa. She went on to become one of the most influential women of our time, publishing some forty works and serving as Curator of Ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History as well as president of major scientific associations. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom following her death in 1978.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1 edition (October 23, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060958049
• ISBN-13: 978-0060958046
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,278,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, June 26, 2002

By 

Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Letters from the Field, 1925-1975 (Paperback)

This book is a collection of letters written by Margaret Mead to friends and family while she was working in the field. The letters span her entire career, from 1925 until 1975, and are accompanied in every chapter by photos by and of Mead. I found the letters quite intriguing, both for what they said as well as for what they didn't say. Some of the letters provide travelogue-like details of what conditions were like at her research sites. Some tell us a little more of what she was really thinking about the people and cultures that she later wrote formal descriptions of. Some of the later letters are quite formal, more journal entries than personal letters.

I found some of the most interesting materials actually to be the short introductions that Mead wrote at the beginning of each chapter, where she glosses quickly over the enormous upheavals in her personal life. In chapter 1, she says goodbye to her "student husband, Luther Cressman." In the next chapter, she notes that she stopped in Auckland on her way to the Admiralty Islands to marry Reo Fortune before starting her 1928-29 research project in Manus. Then in chapter 5, she stops in Singapore to marry Gregory Bateson in preparation for their 1936-1939 project in Bali. Since I had only read Mead's professional writings before, the book's casual mentions of frequent successive marriages aroused some curiosity about her personal life. A quick Web search revealed quite a bit more, including a long-standing connection with Ruth Benedict (see for example "Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict: The Kinship of Women" by Hilary Lapsley). If you are interested in the life and work of Margaret Mead, this book will give you some insight into Mead's own opinions of what she was observing that go beyond the objective descriptions found in her formal works.