Aspects of the Present

Margaret Mead, Rhoda Métraux, Sey Chassler

Morrow, 1980 - Social Science - 320 pages

Presents provocative commentary on our changing world, touching upon the women's movement, marriage, and divorce, contemporary taboos, and children's rights

Contents

• WHAT HAVE WB LEARNED? WHERE ARE WE GOING?: 26
• VISITORS FROM OUTER SPACE?: 40
• A HOUSE DIVIDED: 57

About the author

Margaret Mead, an American anthropologist, was for most of her life the most illustrious curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. She was famed not only as an anthropologist but also as a public figure, a popularizer of the social sciences, and an analyst of American society. While at Columbia University, she was a student of Franz Boas, whose teaching assistant, Ruth Benedict, became one of Mead's closest colleagues and friends; after Benedict's death, Mead became her first biographer and the custodian of her field notes and papers. Mead's early research in Samoa led to her best selling book, "Coming of Age in Samoa" (1928); it also led, after her death, to a well-publicized attack on her work by the Australian anthropologist Derek Freeman. Her importance was not damaged by his book; in fact, there is probably a greater awareness today of the important role that she played in twentieth-century intellectual history as an advocate of tolerance, education, civil liberties, world peace, and the worldwide ecumenical movement within Christianity. She was an active and devout Episcopalian throughout her life. On January 6, 1979, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Aspects of the Present
• Authors: Margaret Mead, Rhoda Métraux, Sey Chassler
• Editor: William Morrow and Company
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Morrow, 1980
• Original from: the University of California
• Digitized: Nov 14, 2008
• ISBN: 0688036295, 9780688036294
• Length: 320 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / General