Essays originally published in Redbook magazine, Jan. 1962 to Oct. 1969.

The autobiography of a pioneer, this is Margaret Mead's story of her life as a woman and as an anthropologist. An enduring cultural icon, she came to represent the new woman, successfully combining motherhood with career, and scholarship with concern for its role in the lives of ordinary people.

"In this book three distinguished scholars discuss a problem basic to the understanding of primitive art: the relation of the traditional techniques of an art to the development of style and the expression of the individual artist. Margaret Mead writes of the Mountain Arapesh of New Guinea, and how a people 'who have no distinctive style of decoration' appropriate and adopt the work of their neighbors. She documents and illustrates the making of a...

Margaret Mead wrote this comprehensive sketch of the culture of the United States - the first since de Tocqueville - in 1942 at the beginning of the Second World War, when Americans were confronted by foreign powers from both Europe and Asia in a particularly challenging manner. Mead's work became an instant classic. It was required reading for anthropology students for nearly two decades, and was widely translated. It was revised and expanded in...

The classic anthropological study describes what it was like in the 1920s for girls growing up in the culture of the Samoan Islands, offering provocative insights into such topics as childhood, gender roles, and culture.

From the Preface: "This book is based on what I have learned about the way human cultures are transmitted and changed, as I have watched primitive cultures come into the modern world during my last fifty years of field work in the Pacific. Since the first edition of this book, I have made three trips to the Pacific, revisiting the Manus, whom I first studied in 1928, and revisited four other groups in various stages of transition. In between I have...