Gods of the Upper Air

Starred review from June 24, 2019
Georgetown University professor King (Midnight at the Pera Palace) serves up a tasty group biography of trailblazing American women and depicts how the field of cultural anthropology emerged to challenge popular Eurocentric beliefs about human development. Early chapters chronicle how, at the turn of the 20th century, the process of field work turned pioneering anthropologist Franz Boas away from dominant theories of cultural and racial hierarchy, toward a more broad-minded, inductively reasoned approach that took seriously the “many different ways of being human.” The second half of the book follows the adventures and achievements of four notable women Boas trained at Columbia University. Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, both well-known theorists who helped to popularize anthropological insights at midcentury, had an intellectually productive, emotionally supportive lifelong partnership; Zora Neale Hurston and Ella Cara Deloria each applied their anthropological skills outside of traditional academic settings to study and depict their own cultures (African-American and Native American, respectively). King chronicles both the women’s struggles to achieve professional recognition and institutional support in a male-dominated field and the challenges of debunking white supremacy in a period of xenophobia, scientific racism, and imperialist ideologies. King’s prose is energetic, enlivened with delicious quotations, juicy personal details, and witty turns of phrase (“Fieldwork was the destroyer of worlds. Marriages failed. Youthful ambitions came to look quaint.”). This complex, delightful book will get readers thinking and keep them turning the pages.

July 1, 2019

Even though anthropology is considered to be related to psychology, King (international affairs & government, Georgetown Univ.; Midnight at the Pera Palace) demonstrates how the field's history makes it unique by taking readers through each leading character who influenced a developmental phase of anthropological thought and practice. In its development, anthropology had to undergo a transformation that started with the questioning of early 20th-century Western cultural ideals, such as race, religion, and sexual expression. Detailed, storylike chapter biographies trace the lives of scholars, writers, and anthropologists such as Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ella Cara Deloria. Using this method, King calls upon future anthropologists to understand how their scholarly predecessors used their distant view from the "upper air" as a means of observation and what that means for ethical methods of study moving forward. VERDICT This group portrait of pioneering leaders in the field is recommended reading for undergraduate and graduate students, professional academics, and individuals with an interest in anthropology, cultural anthropology, and history.--Monique Martinez, Univ. of North Georgia Lib., Dahlonega

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2019
King (Midnight at the Pera Palace, 2014) takes a sweeping look at the rise of cultural anthropology under Franz Boas (1858-1942), paying particular attention to the extraordinary women who studied under Boas and made further key advancements in the field. A native of Germany who began his own research on Baffin Island with the Inuit people, Boas came to New York to teach anthropology at Columbia University. Boas made waves by rejecting the idea of any innate superiority or inferiority in terms of intelligence or physical ability between people of different backgrounds. His research went against the notions his contemporaries were preaching in attempts to assert the supposed superiority of Anglo-Europeans. When the president of Columbia made a concerted effort to keep undergraduates from studying under Boas, the anthropologist found a new pool of eager young minds at Columbia's sister school for women, Barnard. Among his more famous students were Margaret Mead, whose study of young Samoan women, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), became a bestseller; and Zora Neale Hurston, whose research brought her back home to Florida to document the cultural traditions of African Americans living in the region. King's engrossing look at these extraordinary trailblazers deftly illustrates how crucial their research and work remains today.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

Starred review from July 1, 2019
The story of cultural anthropologist Franz Boas (1858-1942) and "a small band of contrarian researchers" who shaped the open-minded way we think now. In this deeply engaging group biography, King (Government and International Affairs; Georgetown Univ.; Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul, 2014, etc.) recounts the lives and work of a handful of American scholars and intellectuals who studied other cultures in the 1920s and '30s, fighting the "great moral evils: scientific racism, the subjugation of women, genocidal fascism, the treatment of gay people as willfully deranged." Led by "Papa" Franz, who taught for four decades in Columbia University's first anthropology department, the group of "misfits and dissenters" (as a university president called them) included Margaret Mead, whose expeditions to Polynesia produced Coming of Age in Samoa (1928); Ruth Benedict, Boas' assistant, Mead's lover, and author of Patterns of Culture (1934); Zora Neale Hurston, the Harlem Renaissance writer whose ethnographic studies led to her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937); and Ella Cara Deloria, a Native American scholar and ethnographer. King offers captivating, exquisitely detailed portraits of these remarkable individuals--the first cultural relativists--who helped demonstrate that humanity is "one undivided thing," that race is "a social reality, not a biological one," and that things had to be "proven" before they could shape law, government, and public policy. "When there was no evidence for a theory," Boas argued, "...you had to let it go--especially if that thing just happened to place people like you at the center of the universe." King's smoothly readable story of the stubborn, impatient Boas and his acolytes emphasizes how their pioneering exploration of disparate cultures contradicts the notion that "our ways are the only commonsensical, moral ones." Rich in ideas, the book also abounds in absorbing accounts of friendships, animosities, and rivalries among these early anthropologists. This superb narrative of debunking scientists provides timely reading for our "great-again" era.

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