The most recommended anthropology books

Who picked these books? Meet our 164 experts.

164 authors created a book list connected to anthropology, and here are their favorite anthropology books.
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Book cover of The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics

Tanya Jakimow Author Of Susceptibility in Development: Micropolitics of Local Development in India and Indonesia

From my list on anthropology of development.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an anthropologist of development who has conducted ethnographic research in India, Indonesia, and more recently, Australia. Throughout my career I have grappled with questions of how power works in development, particularly in and through processes of self-making. I seek new theoretical tools to examine these questions, but always grounded in the realities of the everyday. I came of age when post-development critiques were dominant, but both my idealism and cynicism have been tempered by working alongside local development actors. In my work I try to give readers a sympathetic portrait of their lives, beliefs, and hopes, and how these shape practices, relationships, and consequences of ‘development’. 

Tanya's book list on anthropology of development

Tanya Jakimow Why did Tanya love this book?

The Will to Improve is most celebrated for its explanation of ‘rendering technical’: the ways complex, political factors contributing to poverty are reduced to those amenable to technical intervention.

But I have found Tania Li’s concept of ‘trustee’ the most useful in my work on local development actors: understanding how they come to take on the role of trustee, their desire to ‘improve’ others, and the prickly subjects that resist their efforts.

Li traces the ‘will to improve’ through 200 years of Indonesian history, but it is most powerfully elucidated through her rich ethnographic description from the province of Sulawesi.

Her analysis weaves together Marx, Foucault, and Gramsci, showing how theory can illuminate description. It is a masterclass in storytelling and the power of theory. 

By Tania Murray Li,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Will to Improve as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Will to Improve is a remarkable account of development in action. Focusing on attempts to improve landscapes and livelihoods in Indonesia, Tania Murray Li carefully exposes the practices that enable experts to diagnose problems and devise interventions, and the agency of people whose conduct is targeted for reform. Deftly integrating theory, ethnography, and history, she illuminates the work of colonial officials and missionaries; specialists in agriculture, hygiene, and credit; and political activists with their own schemes for guiding villagers toward better ways of life. She examines donor-funded initiatives that seek to integrate conservation with development through the participation of…


Book cover of Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History

Mara Altman Author Of Gross Anatomy: Dispatches from the Front

From my list on the human body to deepen your appreciation.

Why am I passionate about this?

People, including me, can be so uptight about their bodies. Early on in my career, I found that writing about my shame (chin hair!) or embarrassment (dogs sniffing my crotch!) helped the stigma go away. Researching and learning about how amazing our bodies are helped empower me to feel confident and comfortable being fully myself. I think it can do the same for others, too. My takeaway: There is greatness in our grossness. 

Mara's book list on the human body to deepen your appreciation

Mara Altman Why did Mara love this book?

This book exploded my beliefs about breasts all that they are and all that they’ve been through and where they are headed next. Williams is a fabulous guide, taking the reader on an adventure as she uncovers the anatomy and evolution of the breast, and even the pollutants found inside her own breastmilk. Knowing the vulnerabilities – and history! – of my rack made me appreciate it all the more. 

By Florence Williams,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Breasts as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Did you know that breast milk contains substances similar to cannabis? Or that it's sold on the Internet for 262 times the price of oil? Feted and fetishized, the breast is an evolutionary masterpiece. But in the modern world, the breast is changing. Breasts are getting bigger, arriving earlier, and attracting newfangled chemicals. Increasingly, the odds are stacked against us in the struggle with breast cancer, even among men. What makes breasts so mercurial-and so vulnerable?

In this informative and highly entertaining account, intrepid science reporter Florence Williams sets out to uncover the latest scientific findings from the fields of…


Book cover of Human Motivation

Richard E. Boyatzis Author Of Helping People Change: Coaching with Compassion for Lifelong Learning and Growth

From my list on building leadership skills through models.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a professor and scientist, using my Intentional Change Theory (ICT), I have studied sustained desired change of individuals, teams, organizations, communities, and countries since 1967. I have authored more than 200 articles and 9 books on leadership, competencies, emotional intelligence, competency development, coaching, neuroscience, and management education (including the international best-seller, Primal Leadership with Daniel Goleman and Annie McKee and the recent Helping People Change with Melvin Smith and Ellen Van Oosten). I run several Coursera MOOCs, including Inspiring Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence which has over a million enrolled from 215 countries.

Richard's book list on building leadership skills through models

Richard E. Boyatzis Why did Richard love this book?

To me, an important book should: (1) help us to understand and see things differently; (2) be based on careful research and empirically based; and (3) stand the test of time.

Motivating others is the primary purpose if leaders. McClelland led research into the unconscious processes that motivate people. Using projective techniques and latent coding of myths, folklore, music, prayers, literature and such, he and his colleagues unlocked the deeper messages socialized into people. In this book, McClelland reveals a rich 50 year history of rigorous research from psychology, anthropology, sociology, and history. His theory of motivation is the most liberating and useful, as well as validated through voluminous research. He compiled and updated his many books, articles and those of colleagues in this, his last magnum opus. If you wish to learn about Needs for Achievement, Affiliation and Power and how they explain everything from effectiveness to relationships to…

By David C. McClelland,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Human Motivation as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Human Motivation, originally published in 1987, offers a broad overview of theory and research from the perspective of a distinguished psychologist whose creative empirical studies of human motives span forty years. David McClelland describes methods for measuring motives, the development of motives out of natural incentives and the relationship of motives to emotions, to values and to performance under a variety of conditions. He examines four major motive systems - achievement, power, affiliation and avoidance - reviewing and evaluating research on how these motive systems affect behaviour. Scientific understanding of motives and their interaction, he argues, contributes to understanding of…


Book cover of Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land

Christina Thompson Author Of Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia

From my list on Polynesian history.

Why am I passionate about this?

A dual citizen of Australia and the US, Christina Thompson has traveled extensively in the Pacific, including through most of the archipelagoes in Polynesia. She is the author of two books about Polynesia: a memoir of her marriage to a Māori man called Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All and a history of the ancient voyagers of the Pacific called Sea People. She edits the literary journal Harvard Review and teaches in the writing program at Harvard University Extension. 

Christina's book list on Polynesian history

Christina Thompson Why did Christina love this book?

The Australian historian Greg Dening was one of the great creative thinkers of the late twentieth century, and his influence is everywhere in the modern history and anthropology of the Pacific. Dening, who died in 2008, was especially fascinated by ambiguous interactions and encounters between people from different worlds. One of his earliest books, Islands and Beaches, focuses on the period in the Marquesas when Europeans first arrived, bringing God, guns, germs, and a whole host of other complications. At once sparklingly and scholarly, it tells the vivid story of this tragic and consequential period in Polynesian history.

By Greg Dening,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Islands and Beaches as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Fire and Memory: On Architecture and Energy

Alison G. Kwok and Walter Grondzik Author Of The Green Studio Handbook: Environmental Strategies for Schematic Design

From my list on environmental schematic design.

Why are we passionate about this?

Alison and Walter have come into architecture on different paths, Alison with a biology/chemistry background (yes, one can become an architect with an accredited, first professional degree in architecture) and Walter through architectural engineering. We both believe that the union of science, aesthetics, energy, comfort, and health make buildings work! We enjoy creating simplified design processes for students to use in their work, so that they can gain confidence in the first steps of design. Equally, we feel it important to clearly understand what is to be created and how to confirm that what was intended actually results in the built environment.

Alison's book list on environmental schematic design

Alison G. Kwok and Walter Grondzik Why did Alison love this book?

Architecture is often referred to as an art and a science. This is a reasonably accurate statement in the abstract. In practice, we often assess architecture visually (artistically) and assume (hope) that the science is there (even if hidden). In fact, physics always has the last word.

Fire and Memory reminds us that thermodynamics matters and that buildings are essentially anti-entropic constructs. Who can resist a proposition such as “whether to use the wood to build a small shelter or as firewood for a bonfire. An entire theory of architecture is encapsulated in this simple question.” Or a chapter titled “Energy as the Currency of Nature.”

By Luis Fernandez-Galiano, Gina Carino (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fire and Memory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Architecture and fire, construction and combustion, meet in this poetic treatise on energy in building.

In Fire and Memory, Luis Fernández-Galiano reconstructs the movement from cold to warm architecture, from building fire to building a building with and for fire, through what he calls a "metaphorical plundering" of disciplines as diverse as anthropology and economics, and in particular of ecology and thermodynamics. Beginning with the mythical fire in the origins of architecture and moving to its symbolic representation in the twentieth century, Galiano develops a theoretical dialogue between combustion and construction that ranges from Vitruvius to Le Corbusier, from the…


Book cover of Home: How Habitat Made Us Human

Maya Bernadett Author Of Stories My Grandmother Told Me: A multicultural journey from Harlem to Tohono O'dham

From my list on on the power of family to shape us.

Why am I passionate about this?

Family is one of the few truly universal experiences that all human beings have, because we all come from somewhere. Every human on Earth is raised by someone, so it’s something we can all relate to, for good or for ill. Universal experiences like family allow us as human beings to relate to others, and that common ground is what provides joy and meaning in life. I appreciate that I don’t have to have a master’s degree or PhD in family studies or family therapy to glean insights into how our families shape us. My own observations and analytical writer’s mind made me realize the importance of storytelling in keeping families together, especially across generations.

Maya's book list on on the power of family to shape us

Maya Bernadett Why did Maya love this book?

Family is not just a metaphor- it resides in a physical place, and that place is home. I found this book extremely valuable because it takes an anthropological approach to the meaning of home, exploring the sociological, historical, and even scientific reasons why home is so fundamental to the human condition. The image of a hearth stands out most from this book: that the most fundamental way for humans to make food - fire - created the foundation for viewing home as a place that is crucial to our nourishment and flourishing. This basic aspect of human survival led to a space of protection, peace, comfort, and security- a home. And where there is home, there is family.

By John S. Allen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Home as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

As the adage goes, home is where the heart is. This may seem self-explanatory, but none of our close primate cousins have anything like homes. Whether we live in an igloo or in Buckingham Palace, the fact that Homo sapiens create homes is one of the greatest puzzles of our evolution. In Home , neuroanthropologist John S. Allen marshals evidence from evolutionary anthropology, neuroscience, the study of emotion, and modern sociology to argue that the home is one of the most important cognitive, technological, and cultural products of our species' evolution. It is because we have homes,relatively secure against whatever…


Book cover of Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, Past and Present

Gail Levin Author Of Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography

From my list on the fate of the Edward Hopper Estate.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a Distinguished Professor of art history at CUNY and biographer of artists. I grew up in Atlanta, attended college in Boston, and have worked in New York since my twenties. With a new Ph.D. in art history from Rutgers, I began as curator of the Hopper Collection at the Whitney Museum, assigned to produce a definitive catalogue of all Edward Hopper’s authentic art. His papers were missing except for his record books that recorded every time a work left for sale, loan, or gift. I traced each work as it left Hopper’s possession and discovered a massive number of undocumented artworks stolen from the estate, which the Whitney still wants to cover up.

Gail's book list on the fate of the Edward Hopper Estate

Gail Levin Why did Gail love this book?

I like this book’s discussion of curators as one of two “sources of truth.”

It mentions “curatorial knowledge” and “provenance research,” but also mentions “donors and people associated with the collection.”

With such subjects, there exists a huge area for administrative abuse: for example, those who engage curators/scholars to do provenance research and then dismiss it if not what the museum expected or intended.

Yet this book states, and I agree: “Cataloguing takes deep expertise and time.” So this book brings up some of the pitfalls curators can experience.

By Steven Lubar,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Inside the Lost Museum as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Curators make many decisions when they build collections or design exhibitions, plotting a passage of discovery that also tells an essential story. Collecting captures the past in a way useful to the present and the future. Exhibits play to our senses and orchestrate our impressions, balancing presentation and preservation, information and emotion. Curators consider visitors' interactions with objects and with one another, how our bodies move through displays, how our eyes grasp objects, how we learn and how we feel. Inside the Lost Museum documents the work museums do and suggests ways these institutions can enrich the educational and aesthetic…


Book cover of The Archaeology of Race: The Eugenic Ideas of Francis Galton and Flinders Petrie

Angela Stienne Author Of Mummified: The Stories Behind Egyptian Mummies in Museums

From my list on why there’s an Egyptian mummy in your back garden.

Why am I passionate about this?

When at 13, I declared that I’d become an Egyptologist, quite a lot of people thought it would pass. Fast forward 10 years, and I was starting a PhD on Egyptian mummies in museums – it did not pass. I journeyed from the Louvre where I was a gallery attendant trying to uncover the story of bodies buried in their garden, to England where I relocated with little English to pursue an Egyptology degree… and then two more! The ethics of human remains in museums is a complex topic: that’s why I like to make it more approachable to the public, from running my project Mummy Stories, to giving talks in pubs! 

Angela's book list on why there’s an Egyptian mummy in your back garden

Angela Stienne Why did Angela love this book?

This was the first book to introduce me to the relation between race studies, eugenics, and archaeology.

It was quite a revelation: I was volunteering at the Petrie Museum at the time, and the book uncovers the dodgy relationship between Petrie and Francis Galton.

It was pivotal in transforming the ways I looked at familiar places: it reminded me that places I called home, like the Petrie Museum but also the Louvre, have been very exclusionary to many. It taught me to look differently at places I navigate on a regular basis, to look for the other story.

You’ll then have to listen to the Bricks + Mortals podcast on the history of UCL buildings, and your wanders in Bloomsbury won’t be the same again.

By Debbie Challis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Archaeology of Race as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

How much was archaeology founded on prejudice? The Archaeology of Race explores the application of racial theory to interpret the past in Britain during the late Victorian and Edwardian period. It investigates how material culture from ancient Egypt and Greece was used to validate the construction of racial hierarchies. Specifically focusing on Francis Galton's ideas around inheritance and race, it explores how the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie applied these in his work in Egypt and in his political beliefs. It examines the professional networks formed by societies, such as the Anthropological Institute, and their widespread use of eugenic ideas in analysing…


Book cover of The Afterlife Is Where We Come from: The Culture of Infancy in West Africa

Meredith F. Small Author Of Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent

From my list on the anthropology of parenting.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an anthropologist with a background in evolutionary biology, primate behavior, and cross-cultural approaches to parenting. I taught “The Anthropology of Parenting” for 20 years at Cornell University. The book grew from interviews with anthropologists, pediatricians, and child development experts taking a different stance about parents and babies—that we should look at how babies are designed by evolution and how cultures then interfere with those expectations. My book shows there is no perfect way to raise a child but there are styles in other cultures we can borrow to make our babies, and ourselves, more at ease.

Meredith's book list on the anthropology of parenting

Meredith F. Small Why did Meredith love this book?

This book is the only ethnography of infants, the Beng of Ivory Coast, West Africa. Gottlieb does a masterful job of explaining what is “normal” for the Beng and how very different their attitudes about parenting and babies are from Western Culture, and why the Beng believe their parenting ways are better. Gottlieb’s telling of the Beng baby story, like her writing, is engaging and life-changing.

By Alma Gottlieb,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Afterlife Is Where We Come from as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When a new baby arrives among the Beng people of West Africa, they see it not as being born, but as being reincarnated after a rich life in a previous world. Far from being a tabula rasa, a Beng infant is thought to begin its life filled with spiritual knowledge. How do these beliefs affect the way the Beng rear their children?

In this unique and engaging ethnography of babies, Alma Gottlieb explores how religious ideology affects every aspect of Beng childrearing practices-from bathing infants to protecting them from disease to teaching them how to crawl and walk-and how widespread…


Book cover of Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior

William Von Hippel Author Of The Social Leap: The New Evolutionary Science of Who We Are, Where We Come From, and What Makes Us Happy

From my list on understanding human nature.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Queensland. I’ve had the good fortune to spend my life studying humans and trying to figure out how they got that way. These are some of the best books I’ve read on this fascinating topic. They might seem to be all over the map, but understanding human nature requires approaching it from many different perspectives, and these books will get you started.

William's book list on understanding human nature

William Von Hippel Why did William love this book?

To understand human nature you need to take a deep dive into anthropology, particularly into the lives of hunter-gatherers. Because humans are the most flexible animal on this planet, it can be incredibly difficult for an outsider to tell which lessons from any one society are general and which relate to just their small part of the world. The beauty of this book is that the brilliant anthropologist who wrote it does the hard yards for you, narrating a fascinating and highly accessible trip through the lives of hunter-gatherers.

By Christopher Boehm,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Hierarchy in the Forest as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Are humans by nature hierarchical or egalitarian? Hierarchy in the Forest addresses this question by examining the evolutionary origins of social and political behavior. Christopher Boehm, an anthropologist whose fieldwork has focused on the political arrangements of human and nonhuman primate groups, postulates that egalitarianism is in effect a hierarchy in which the weak combine forces to dominate the strong.

The political flexibility of our species is formidable: we can be quite egalitarian, we can be quite despotic. Hierarchy in the Forest traces the roots of these contradictory traits in chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, and early human societies. Boehm looks at…


Book cover of The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics
Book cover of Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History
Book cover of Human Motivation

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