Charles King, "Gods of the Upper Air: How A Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century" (Doubleday, 2019)

New Books in Sociology · Sep 4, 2019 · 1h 2m

American anthropologists consider Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead to be foundational figures, but outside the academy few people know the details of their ideas. In this new volume, Charles King provides a carefully-researched and beautifully-written history of the Boas Circle that everyone will enjoy reading. King covers the period from Boas's birth to the publication of Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, combining the personal and intellectual histories of authors such as Zora Neale Hurston, Ella Deloria, Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and of course…