W. H. R. Rivers: Pioneer Anthropologist, Psychiatrist of the Ghost Road (Paperback)

by Richard Slobodin (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Alan Sutton Publishing, Ltd.; Revised edition (July 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750914904
• ISBN-13: 978-0750914901
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,813,534 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful but Disappointing, July 14, 2007

By	R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is a curious book about the fascinating WHR Rivers. The polymathic Rivers was a pioneering neuroscientist, psychologist, and anthropologist who made substantial contributions to all these fields in the peri-WWI period. Interest in Rivers increased in recent years because he appears as a major and particularly sympathetic character in Pat Barker's outstanding trilogy of novels on WWI. Slobodin's book, which is the only effort at a biography of Rivers, deals mainly with his work as a pioneering ethnologist. The structure of the book is odd. The book opens with a biographical sketch of Rivers' life, then proceeds to series of discussions of Rivers' anthropological work, and finishes with a selection of Rivers' writings on anthropology. Coverage of Rivers' work in Neurology, Neuroscience, and his work as a military psychiatrist during WWI is relatively cursory. Nor does Slobodin offer much in the way of historical context against which to judge Rivers' contributions. The last deficiency is particularly unfortunate as Rivers appears to have been situated within a particularly dense and diverse intellectual network. Rivers, for example, must be the only anthropologist to have worked with the great pioneering psychiatrist Emil Kraeplin.

Rivers was a somewhat ascetic and rather private man. He never married and there is little available documentation - letters, diaries, etc. - about this personal life. Slobodin appears to have decided that there was insufficient information about Rivers life to produce a substantial biography. Slobodin, himself an anthropologist, elected to concentrate on one aspect of Rivers career. This is probably a mistake. Rivers published a great deal of work in his chosen fields and he appears to have been one of those intellectuals who really lived for ideas. Based on the personal information available and Rivers extensive but varied writings, a real intellectual biography is certainly feasible and would make a very interesting book.