Customer Reviews

The Sexual Life of Savages in North Western Melanesia

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

 

 

This edition of this book is not-so-hot, largely due to the quality of the photo reproductions. I have access to the first editions of Malinowski, and no later editions are of the same quality in ANY respect, including the Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

I URGE readers to be considerate and exercise caution and thoughtfulness when giving bad ratings to books or anything else--especially if there's only one version available--because of quality issues that should really be directed at the publisher. A warning about photo quality is great and helpful to a degree, but a cumulative one star (about to be corrected a bit with my five) may prevent an individual or library from making a purchase and that may, in turn, eventually drive a valuable book off the "store" shelves.

If photo quality is poor in a reprint, it more than likely is due to the degradation or disappearance of the original prints and negatives. A book can also be in the public domain and the originals may not be made available to a re-printer so they'll scan an older copy. Plenty of good reasons that, in themselves, don't deserve one star either.

This is an important book that is cited nowadays more often than read--there's this idea floating around that older anthropologists somehow can't have anything valid to say today. Malinowski worked with degrees of detail that seem to elude modern anthropologists and he also studied people who had not yet been overwhelmed with Western culture (a simple statement of fact, not a value judgement). His writing is exciting to read, like a good adventure story, as he's bringing to light a lot of fascinating information in a way that subtly coves the excitement of discovery. His attitude to the cultures he studied is respectful and often admiring.

This book by Malinowski is fantastic, and I already own an earlier edition from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. It is a milestone work in ethnography, and a must-read for those interested in human sexuality and the larger issue of social violence. However, this particular Kessinger Publishing edition is TERRIBLE in that virtually all of the photos are unrecognizable. (NOTE: The first time I submitted this review to Amazon, it popped up on several different editions of the Malinowski book, by different publishers -- my criticism applies ONLY to the Kessinger edition, with a plain text yellow-border cover.) Half the value of the Malinowski book is the dozens of photographs which he took, which appeared in all editions since the very first one, but which in the Kessinger reproduction come out looking like bad images from a old fax machine, being transmitted to your telephone from another planet. Don't waste your bucks on this particular edition. Kessinger specializes in republication of old out-of-copyright items, which are OK if all you want is the text. For anything with photos, it is a giant disappointment.