Showing titles in Anthropology

Football is at a crossroads, its future imperiled by the very physicality that drives its popularity. Its grass roots - high school and youth travel program - are withering. But players from the small South Pacific American territory of Samoa are bucking that trend, quietly becoming the most disproportionately overrepresented culture in the sport. But the very thing that makes them so good at football - their extraordinary internalization of discipline and warrior self-image - makes them especially vulnerable to its pitfalls, including concussions and brain injuries.

De meeste culturen en religies kennen een vorm van dodencultus en dodengeloof: gedragingen en denkbeelden rond de doden en de dood. Zoals bijvoorbeeld het achterlaten van voorwerpen en sieraden in een graf, angst voor de doden en bidden voor de ziel van de overledene. In bepaalde culturen is ook een echte vorm van onsterfelijkheidsgeloof ontstaan: de overtuiging dat de persoon na zijn dood verder leeft en in dat bestaan de gevolgen ondergaat van zijn daden in het vorige leven.

Americans are generous with their pocketbooks, but trying to make a difference and actually making a difference are two different things. Where Am I Giving? by New York Times best-selling author Kelsey Timmerman takes you on a journey to meet people who will inspire you to live a purpose-filled, generous life and make the greatest impact you can through your career, time, consumer dollars, and donations.

An insightful look at how cross-racial friendships work and fail within American society.

Une heure de promenade auditive dans les pas des anthropologues, en compagnie de Marie-Armelle Deguy, pour interroger nos sociétés humaines.

600 ricette per filtri, incantesimi, scongiuri e malie. Tutte provengono da documenti originali scritti tra il XIV e il XVIII secolo. Le ricette sono suddivise in due grandi categorie: stregoneria nera (incanti, sortilegi e malefìci) e stregoneria bianca (rimedi, controfatture e prodigi benefici). Per ognuna delle ricette riportate sono indicati gli ingredienti e i metodi per eseguirle. Quando è stato possibile sono stati pure indicati il nome della strega o dello stregone.

As recently as 11,000 years ago - "near time" to geologists - mammoths, mastodons, gomphotheres, ground sloths, giant armadillos, native camels and horses, the dire wolf, and many other large mammals roamed North America. In what has become one of science's greatest riddles, these large animals vanished in North and South America around the time humans arrived at the end of the last great ice age.

Child psychiatrist and best-selling author Robert Coles offers a profound meditation on how secular culture has settled into the hearts and minds of Americans. This book is a sweeping essay on the shift from religious control over Western society to the scientific dominance of the mind.

Part forensic scientist, part master sleuth, Megan Smolenyak has solved some of America's oldest and most fascinating genealogical mysteries. You've read the headlines; now get the inside story as the "Indiana Jones of genealogy" reveals how she cracked her news-making cases and became the face of this increasingly popular field. Whether she's scouring websites to uncover the surprising connections between famous figures or using DNA tests to locate family members of fallen soldiers, Smolenyak's historical sleuthing is as provocative, richly layered, and exciting as America itself.

In the age of Trump, our society is defined by fear. Indeed, three out of four Americans say they feel more fearful today than they did only a couple decades ago. But are we living in exceptionally perilous times? In his best-selling work The Culture of Fear, sociologist Barry Glassner demonstrates it is our perception of danger that has increased, not the actual level of risk.

Moving from St Paul’s coining of the word in the first century of the Christian Era right up to the present day, charisma continues to be a powerful influence, not always for the good, in the fields of politics, banking, terrorism, theatre and film. Along the way, Francine takes in early medieval mystics such as Margery Kempe and Joan of Arc; the Elizabethan belief in the so-called 'Royal Touch' and its different manifestations today; the powerful healing claims of Franz Mesmer; and radical charismatic leaders from Garibaldi to Osama bin Laden.

In Strange Bedfellows, David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton look at how biology actually promotes monogamy in some species and how these lessons apply to human beings. An accessible work of science that is relevant to our intimate daily life, Strange Bedfellows will reassure some people, surprise others, and engage everyone.

L'opera raccoglie alcuni saggi dell'antropologo Claude Lévi-Strauss, famoso per aver applicato il metodo dell'indagine strutturalista agli studi antropologici...

Leili could not have imagined that arriving late to Islamic morals class would change the course of her life. But her arrival catches the eye of a young man, and a chance meeting soon draws Leili into a new circle of friends and artists. Gathering in the cafes of Tehran, these young college students come together to create an underground play that will wake up their generation. They play with fire, literally and figuratively, igniting a drama both personal and political to perform their play - just once.

In the aftermath of the horrific trench warfare of the First World War, the poppy - sprouting across the killing fields of France and Belgium, then immortalized in John McCrae’s moving poem - became a worldwide icon. Yet the poppy has a longer history: as the telltale sign of human cultivation of the land, of the ravages of war, and of the desire to escape the earthly realm through Romantic opium dreams or the grim reality of morphine drips.

Once we step on the treadmill of progress, it's hard to step off. Yet Edward Tenner shows that human ingenuity can be applied in self-preservation as well, and he sheds light on the ways in which the users of commonplace technology surprise designers and engineers, as when early typists developed the touch method still employed on today's keyboards. And he offers concrete advice for reaping benefits from the devices that we no longer seem able to live without. Although dependent on these objects, we can also use them to liberate ourselves.

Making War at Fort Hood offers an illuminating look at war through the daily lives of the people whose job it is to produce it. Kenneth MacLeish conducted a year of intensive fieldwork among soldiers and their families at and around the US Army's Fort Hood in central Texas. He shows how war's reach extends far beyond the battlefield into military communities where violence is as routine, boring, and normal as it is shocking and traumatic.

This insider's look at inherited wealth in the United States explores the complex meanings of money and success in American society with a new introduction that examines whether America's privileged class will be willing or able to play a leadership role in the twenty-first century.

Written in a brilliantly engaging style by biologist Jules Howard, this fascinating and highly engaging work covers the how and why of sex on Earth, in all its diversity. From sperm wars to cuckoldry, hermaphrodites and virgin births, spent males, racy harems, clitoral births, hips, breasts and birdsong, penis-percussion, and those riskiest and most elusive of all traits, monogamy and true love, all this and more is discussed in Sex on Earth, as Jules takes us on a voyage of discovery of the ins and outs of animal reproduction.

It wasn’t surprising when the first abandoned bicycles were found along the dirt roads and farmland just across the border from Tijuana, but before long they were arriving in droves. The bikes went from curiosity, to nuisance, to phenomenon. But until they caught the eye of journalist Kimball Taylor, only a small cadre of human smugglers - coyotes - and migrants could say how or why they’d gotten there. This is the story of 7,000 bikes that made an incredible journey and one young man from Oaxaca who arrived at the border with nothing, built a small empire, and then vanished.