Primitive Heritage : An Anthropological Anthology

London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1954. Hardcover. Very Good/Good. 5.75 X 9. H/B 592 pages, condition is very good, the DJ has some edge wear and is slightly dirty. Margaret Mead and Nicolas Calas here present, through the writings of many great anthropologists, a comprehensive picture of primitive man. Nothing of the kind, so far as we are aware, has ever been attempted before: and the result is enthralling. The work is divided into sixteen great parts, of which the following are specimen titles: The Mythical Past, Children, Puberty, Marriage, Art Thought and Sport, The Daily Round, Religious Experience, Feasts and Sacrifices, War and Peacemaking, Death, Immortality. Grouped under these sixteen heads are no less than one hundred and eleven items, ranging in length from a thousand words or under to seven thousand or over. A very few of them are printed on the front of this jacket. You can read the book as a continuous whole, or you can read it as a bedside, fireside or holiday book to browse in at leisure. Read either way it is equally entrancing. There is enough material in it to last, as a bedside book, for a year. The variety of authors is as remarkable as the variety of subjects. They include Herodotus, Tacitus, Rousseau, Engels, Nietzsche, Freud, Crawley, Marett, Levy-Bruhl, Sapir, Ruth Benedict, Doughty, D. H. Lawrence, Gide, Tom Harrisson, Malinowsky, Hermann Melville, Kidd, Bateson, Morgan, Boas, Geoffrey Gorer and Margaret Mead herself. What are all those "Great Short Stories of the World" volumes, compared to such a book as this?