Goody, Eurasian Miracle

In this short book Jack Goody systematically dismantles the Eurocentric view of the world. He argues that we need to look for a Eurasian miracle that went back to the Urban Revolution of the Bronze Age, that affected the Near East, India and China well before Europe and that was much advanced by the adoption of writing.

Miller, Stuff

“This is a unique book that comes from a unique scholar. In this one volume, one can see the power of material culture as a means to study culture and society more generally. The specifics are informative and the larger formulations profound. The writing is consistently clear – at times, endearing – and the content brilliant.”

Harvey Molotch, New York University

Wacquant, Urban Outcasts

In this book, Loïc Wacquant reveals that urban marginality is not everywhere the same, as the reader is taken inside the dilapidated black ghetto of inner Chicago and the deindustrializing banlieu of outer Paris.

Moore, The Subject of Anthropology

"A very well written book on an important topic by one of the most gifted anthropologists of her generation ... that is bound to become a classic text in the emergent cross-road between psychoanalysis, anthropology and feminist studies."

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Miller, The Comfort of Things

"A wonderful and unusual antidote to the fear that humanity and individuality is losing its battle with modern consumerism. In his book, even the most trivial product of consumerism can be rendered almost magical by its owners."

Financial Times

Burke, Cultural Hybridity

The period in which we live is marked by increasingly frequent and intense cultural encounters of all kinds.  In this concise book, leading historian Peter Burke considers these fascinating and contested phenomena, ranging over theories, practices, processes and events in a manner that is as wide-ranging and vibrant as the topic at hand

Hammoudi, A Season in Mecca

"It is as much a subtle, complex meditation as it is an example of the 'art of reportage'. It is a commentary on one Arab intellectual's modern dilemmas as well as on the hajj as he experienced it ... this struggle gives the writing much of its deep interest."

London Review of Books

Livi Bacci, El Dorado in the Marshes

The search for gold and for the mythical El Dorado gripped the imagination of the conquistadors from the beginning of the sixteenth century. This beautifully illustrated book offers an enthralling account of the Spanish search for gold in the Americas and the myth of 'the gilded man'.

Livi Bacci, Conquest

"An impressive argument for a more complex way of understanding the conquest of what is now Latin America than the single-cause explanations that have been dominant for the past several decades. The translation is lucid and easy to follow, and the generous contemporary illustrations of the life of the Indios at the time of conquest further enrich the text."

Population Studies

Zeitlin, The Historical Muhammad

"This book will be of value to serious students of Islamic history as well as educated readers generally. Both groups will be well able to navigate the historical and historiographical landscapes of the rise of Islam - with the foundational qualities that enabled it to develop into a world religion. The pursuit of certainty in discerning and understanding Muhammad's historical biography and the rise of his religious movement is ongoing, and Irving Zeitlin has provided a clear, balanced, and plausible account using traditional sources and modern scholarly theories and interpretations." 

Frederick M. Denny, University of Colorado at Boulder

Behringer, Witches and Witch-Hunts: A global History

‘Wolfgang Behringer establishes the importance of a truly global history of witchcraft. Setting aside familiar Western notions, he deploys a more comprehensive definition of witchcraft as the malicious use of evil magic. He brilliantly sketches the history of European witch-hunting and uses this to illuminate the twentieth-century struggle against witches in many parts of the post-colonial world such as South America, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. This book marks a real advance in our understanding of witchcraft, and a remarkable and astute blending of anthropology with history.’

H. C. Erik Midelfort, C. Julian Bishko Professor of History and Religious Studies, University of Virginia

Inglis, Clifford Geertz

'Fred Inglis's biography is useful and charming. It is useful because it contains so many facts, and because it is perhaps the most detailed intellectual analysis of Geertz's work now available.'

Times Literary Supplement

Moore, Feminism and Anthropology

'I do not know of any other work which gives one such a sense of the scope and substance of feminist scholarship within anthropology. This is no abstract debate about possibilities: with rare intelligence Moore sanely and superbly charts what has already been done and consequently what lies ahead. The book's breadth of vision is generous, its approach authoritative, and its final critique of the limitations as well as the promises of feminist anthropology resounding'

Marilyn Strathern, University of Manchester

Hodder, Archaeological Theory Today

This volume provides an authoritative account of the current status of archaeological theory, as presented by some of its major exponents and innovators over the last decade. It summarizes recent developments and looks to the future, exploring some of the cutting-edge ideas at the forefront of the discipline.

Sørensen, Gender Archaeology

'For a penetrating analysis of the state of gender archaeology today, and an extended discussion of the ways in which archaeology can best contribute to understanding gender, this book is extremely important ... Clear and cogent, this book will be of interest to all archaeologists because of its emphasis on the materiality of gender.'

Journal of Anthropological Research

This major new textbook explores the relations between gender and archaeology, providing an innovative and important account of how material culture is used in the construction of gender.