Mead’s remarkable 50 years of work in the field of anthropology are retold in this inspiring biography in the Oxford Portraits in Science series. Readers are transported to Samoa to understand Mead’s fieldwork with Samoan adolescents, entertained with tales about the Manus children in the Admiralty Islands, introduced to the exotic ceremonial life of the Balinese, and returned to the US for Mead’s critical assessments of American life written during WWII. Most importantly, however, Mark leaves readers a reminder of Mead’s conviction that we must not judge so-called “primitive” cultures against our own, but as separate cultures worthy of understanding and respect. This study of Margaret Mead’s life is critical to current social dialogue on how to promote tolerance and eliminate stereotypes between the races and sexes; perhaps Mark’s work, already a great introduction to Mead’s own writings, will become required reading for America’s youth. (photos, chronology, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 11-16)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-19-511679-8
Page Count: 110
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
Katz (Black Women of the Old West, 1995, etc.) takes fascinating material—the tale of free and escaped African-Americans who helped colonize the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys from the late 18th-century to the middle of the 19th century—and gives it a textbook treatment. In this gathering of details and events in the lives of real people who settled the area, he presents a full history of the contributions of determined people who established schools and churches, fought slavery, and won basic civil rights. The many black-and-white period drawings and photographs help establish the people in the narrative and the facts surrounding their lives. The facts alone, one after the other, add up to a cogent picture of the growing wealth and importance of African-Americans in US history, but the dry presentation may doom it to use solely for reference or as a supplement to more inviting works. (index, not seen, maps, charts, notes, bibliography) (Nonfiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-689-81410-0
Page Count: 171
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is a thoughtful and well-written biography of Einstein, a complicated man whose life and work Severance (Thomas Jefferson, 1998, etc.) chronicles clearly and firmly. He explains how Einstein challenged the established thinkers (Galileo and Newton) in the field of physics, after a childhood that included his parents’ concerns that their son might be mildly retarded. Even “his teachers considered him a bit stupid,” for he studied only what interested him and lacked “obedience and discipline.” Also covered is Einstein’s father’s gift of a compass, an object that seemed to unlock deeply hidden things about the universe. Severance sets forth Einstein’s contradictions as a man, but readers will appreciate this thinker’s role in constructing the framework of modern physics and extending science’s information on the universe. (b&w photos, chronology, bibliography, index) (Biography. 10-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 23, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-93100-2
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
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