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Totems and Teachers: Key Figures in the History of Anthropology. Sydel Silverman, ed. New York: AltaMira Press, 2004. 258 pp.
Anthropologists teaching courses on culture theory or the history of anthropology and others concerned with these topics will welcome the second, revised edition of Sydel Silverman's valuable book. Originating in a lecture series at the CUNY Graduate Center in 1976, Totems and Teachers appeared in 1981 and remained in print for nearly 15 years. The book does not pretend to be comprehensive, and the editor acknowledges "glaring omissions" of major anthropologists owing to financial constraints restricting the project. The lectures examined the lives and works of anthropological luminaries, no longer living, as interpreted by prominent scholars who, in most cases, were students or colleagues of the subjects. Reappearing in the new edition, the eight original eponymous chapter titles and contributors are Franz Boas (Alexander Lesser), Alfred L. Kroeber (Eric R. Wolf), Paul Radin (Stanley Diamond), Bronislaw Malinowski (Raymond Firth), Ruth Benedict (Sidney W. Mintz), Julian H. Steward (Robert F. Murphy), Leslie A. White (Robert L. Carneiro), and Robert Redfield (Nathaniel Tarn). Only the Malinowski chapter by Firth derived from a...