Patterns of Culture

Rating:
Summary: a classic in the field
Review: This book describes several diverse cultures in depth and detail. The emphasis is on overall world view and the conceptual foundations of each culture. The writing is lucid, involving and evocative. This book sheds more light on the issue of what is basic to all human nature, and what is culturaly influenced, then any other I know.

Rating:
Summary: Outdated and Outlandish
Review: To put it bluntly, this book is garbage. The language is so dry and the tone of the anthropologist so condescending, it makes one picture Ms. Benedict smoking a pipe in an armchair of a library somewhere.

This book should come under fire because Benedict let others do much of the research for her. This is a theme revisited in many of her works (i.e. "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"). She received much flack for it, as well she should. Anthropology lived vicariously is not anthropology at all.