PEOPLE AND PLACES
by Margaret Mead
In an excellent series that includes such distinguished books as Craven's Rainbow Book of Art and Peattie's Rainbow Book of Nature, this book by America's most distinguished anthropologist is outstanding. It might be defined as a young people's encyclopedia of man. The text covers a wide range — history, economics, communication, agriculture, warfare — virtually every realm in which man participates. With an all-envisioning comprehension, she encompasses time from pre-history to the present, from Africa to the Arctic, showing the dramatic differences between societies, interpreting them in terms of need, environment, intellectual and material tools. Information and perspective vital to an understanding of man and society strike a blow at provincialism and intolerance. And it all reads with the ease of practised travel through the world of man.