Plain Secrets
An Outsider among the Amish
Written by Joe Mackall

Format: Trade Paperback, 248 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: June 1, 2008
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1065-5 (0-8070-1065-0)

Joe Mackall has lived surrounded by the Swartzentruber Amish community of Ashland County, Ohio, for over sixteen years. They are the most traditional and insular of all the Amish sects: the Swartzentrubers live without gas, electricity, or indoor plumbing; without lights on their buggies or cushioned chairs in their homes; and... Read more >

The Woman in the Body
A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction
Written by Emily Martin

Format: Trade Paperback, 312 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: August 1, 2001
Price: $26.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4645-6 (0-8070-4645-0)

A bold reappraisal of science and society, The Woman in the Body explores the different ways that women’s reproduction is seen in American culture. Contrasting the views of medical science with those of ordinary women from diverse social and economic backgrounds, anthropologist Emily Martin presents unique fieldwork on American culture and... Read more >

Living Santerķa
Rituals and Experiences in an Afro-Cuban Religion
Written by Michael Atwood Mason

Format: Trade Paperback, 176 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: August 17, 2002
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-077-1 (1-58834-077-5)

In 1992 Smithsonian anthropologist Michael Atwood Mason traveled to Cuba for initiation as a priest into the Santería religion. Since then he has created an active oricha “house” and has initiated five others as priests. He is a rare combination: a scholar-practitioner who is equally fluent in his profession and his... Read more >

The Venus Blueprint
Uncovering the Ancient Science of Sacred Spaces
Written by Richard Merrick

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: EVOLVER EDITIONS
On Sale: May 22, 2012
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-58394-538-4 (1-58394-538-5)

In 2010, Richard Merrick took a family trip to Scotland’s Rosslyn chapel–the enigmatic fifteenth-century temple made famous by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Little did he know he was about to embark upon an intellectual and personal journey that would lead to the discovery of a real-life lost symbol–one that... Read more >

Why We Hate Us
American Discontent in the New Millennium
Written by Dick Meyer

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: September 22, 2009
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-40663-7 (0-307-40663-6)

"Dick Meyer has done the impossible -- he diagnoses the self-loathing, moral confusion and ennui that infect supersized America without hectoring us and badgering us, and without tiresome self-righteousness or smugness. Why We Hate Us takes us on a rollicking, laugh-out-loud ride across the brittle American landscape, and by 'us' I... Read more >

How I Learned English
55 Accomplished Latinos Recall Lessons in Language and Life
Written by Tom Miller

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: National Geographic
On Sale: August 21, 2007
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-4262-0097-7 (1-4262-0097-8)

All over the world there are people struggling to master the quirks and challenges of English. In today's America, many millions of them are Latino—and in this eloquent collection, nearly 60 of the best known contribute fascinating, revealing, often touching essays on the very personal process each went through to achieve... Read more >

The Other Wes Moore
One Name, Two Fates
Written by Wes Moore

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
On Sale: January 11, 2011
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-52820-7 (0-385-52820-5)

Winner, 2011 BCALA (Black Caucus of ALA) Literary Award, Nonfiction
A 2011 Booklist Top 10 Black History Nonfiction Book

Selected for Common Reading at:
Colleges & Universities
Bay Path College (Springfield, MA)
Berry College (Mount Berry, GA)
Brookhaven College (Farmers Branch, TX)
Bunker Hill Community College (Boston, MA)
Cabrini College (Radnor, PA)
California State University at Bakersfield (Bakersfield, CA)... Read more >

Lost History
The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and Artists
Written by Michael H. Morgan

Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
Publisher: National Geographic
On Sale: June 19, 2007
Price: $26.00
ISBN: 978-1-4262-0092-2 (1-4262-0092-7)

In an era when the relationship between Islam and the West seems mainly defined by mistrust and misunderstanding, we often forget that for centuries Muslim civilization was the envy of the world. Essential reading for any student seeking to understand the major role played by the early Muslim world in influencing... Read more >

Underground
The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
Written by Haruki Murakami

Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 10, 2001
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-72580-7 (0-375-72580-6)

From Haruki Murakami, internationally acclaimed author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood, a work of literary journalism that is as fascinating as it is necessary, as provocative as it is profound.

In March of 1995, agents of a Japanese religious cult attacked the Tokyo subway system with sarin, a gas... Read more >

Start Something That Matters

Written by Blake Mycoskie

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
On Sale: May 15, 2012
Price: $14.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8144-5 (0-8129-8144-8)

Selected for common reading at Coastal Carolina University, Missouri State University, Philadelphia University, and SUNY Buffalo

The incredible story of the man behind TOMS Shoes and One for One, the revolutionary business model that marries fun, profit, and social good

“A creative and open-hearted business model for our times.”—The Wall Street Journal

Why this... Read more >

Journey to the Vanished City
The Search for a Lost Tribe of Israel
Written by Tudor Parfitt

Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: April 4, 2000
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-72454-1 (0-375-72454-0)

In a mixture of travel, adventure, and scholarship, historian Tudor Parfitt sets out in search of answers to a fascinating ethnological puzzle: is the Lemba tribe of Southern Africa really one of the lost tribes of Israel, descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba?

Beginning in the Lemba villages in... Read more >

Long Life, Honey in the Heart

Written by Martin Prechtel

Format: Trade Paperback, 392 pages
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
On Sale: October 20, 2004
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-55643-538-6 (1-55643-538-X)

Martín Prechtel continues the narrative of his unique life in Santiago Atitlan in Long Life, Honey in the Heart, an eloquent memoir replete with the subtle intelligence and sophistication of Mayan culture. Set against the dramatic backdrop of Guatemala's political upheaval in the 1980s, this heady mix of magic, humor, and... Read more >

Stealing Benefacio's Roses
A Mayan Epic
Written by Martin Prechtel

Format: Trade Paperback, 392 pages
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
On Sale: June 7, 2006
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-55643-587-4 (1-55643-587-8)

Following the acclaimed Secrets of the Talking Jaguar and Long Life, Honey in the Heart, this is an expansive, lyrical novel in the tradition of indigenous oral storytelling. Based on the author's many years of living in a Guatemalan village, Stealing Benefacio's Roses interweaves dramatic recountings of village life and the... Read more >

Dead Man Walking
An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States
Written by Helen Prejean

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: May 31, 1994
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-75131-1 (0-679-75131-9)

In Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean takes the reader inside the United States' death penalty system and asks how can a society benefit from replicating the violence it condemns.  In 1982, she became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, convicted of the murder of two teenagers and sentenced to die in... Read more >

Ecology, Meaning, and Religion

Written by Roy A. Rappaport

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
On Sale: February 3, 1993
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-938190-27-1 (0-938190-27-X)

"While many anthropologists of various epistemological persuasions would perhaps dismiss such topics as the business of priests rather than of scientists, Rappaport correctly perceives that the problem of man's religious consciousness is not only a legitimate object of anthropological study, it might well be the most critical test to which any... Read more >

The Cultural Creatives
How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Written by Paul H. Ray, Ph.D. and Sherry Ruth Anderson

Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: October 2, 2001
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-609-80845-0 (0-609-80845-1)

ARE YOU A CULTURAL CREATIVE?

Do you dislike all the emphasis in modern culture on success and “making it,” on getting and spending, on wealth and luxury goods?

Do you care deeply about the destruction of the environment and would pay higher taxes or prices to clean it up and to stop global... Read more >

Between Man and Beast
An Unlikely Explorer, the Evolution Debates, and the African Adventure that Took the Victorian World by Storm
Written by Monte Reel

Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Publisher: Doubleday
On Sale: March 12, 2013
Price: $26.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-53422-2 (0-385-53422-1)

The unbelievably riveting adventure of an unlikely young explorer who emerged from the jungles of Africa with evidence of a mysterious, still mythical beast—the gorilla—only to stumble straight into the center of the biggest debate of the day: Darwin’s theory of evolution

In 1856 Paul Du Chaillu marched into the equatorial wilderness... Read more >

Forty Million Dollar Slaves
The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete
Written by William C. Rhoden

Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: July 24, 2007
Price: $14.99
ISBN: 978-0-307-35314-6 (0-307-35314-1)

From Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, African American athletes have been at the center of modern culture, their on-the-field heroics admired and stratospheric earnings envied. But for all their money, fame, and achievement, says New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden, black athletes still find themselves on the... Read more >

Culture & Truth
The Remaking of Social Analysis
Written by Renato Rosaldo

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: August 1, 1993
Price: $21.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4623-4 (0-8070-4623-X)

Exposing the inadequacies of old conceptions of static cultures and detached observers, the book argues instead for social science to acknowledge and celebrate diversity, narrative, emotion, and subjectivity. Read more >

Death, Trust and Society
Mapping Religion and Culture
Written by Lionel Rothkrug

Format: Hardcover, 192 pages
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
On Sale: March 1, 2006
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-1-55643-551-5 (1-55643-551-7)

Lionel Rothkrug made his name 25 years ago by theorizing that just as a human personality is defined by how an individual organizes his or her powers to behave, so a society acquires personality in the exercise of its organizational powers. Death, Trust and Society revisits and expands on this concept... Read more >

UFO Crash at Roswell
The Genesis of a Modern Myth
Written by Benson Saler, Charles A. Ziegler and Charles Moore

Format: Trade Paperback, 216 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: June 22, 2010
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-063-4 (1-58834-063-5)

In the summer of 1947 something mysterious crashed in the New Mexican desert near the town of Roswell. Whether it was an alien spacecraft manned by tiny humanlike beings or–the US government’s official explanation–a scientific research balloon has long been a subject of passionate debate. Transcending the believer-versus-skeptic debate, anthropologists Benson... Read more >

Anthropology Explored, Second Edition
The Best of Smithsonian AnthroNotes
Edited by Ruth Selig, Marilyn R. London and P. Ann Kaupp

Format: Trade Paperback, 496 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: April 17, 2004
Price: $21.95
ISBN: 978-1-58834-093-1 (1-58834-093-7)

This new edition offers a variety of clearly written and readily accessible articles from the Smithsonian’s highly acclaimed, award-winning publication AnthroNotes. Some of the world’s leading anthropologists explore fundamental questions humans ask about themselves as individuals, as societies, and as a species. The articles reveal the richness and breadth of anthropology... Read more >

Development as Freedom

Written by Amartya Sen

Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: August 15, 2000
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-72027-4 (0-385-72027-0)

Development as Freedom is a general exposition of the economic ideas and analyses of Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Science. This brilliant and indispensable treatise compellingly analyzes the nature of contemporary economic development from the perspective of human freedom.

Freedom, Sen persuasively argues, is at once... Read more >

Back to Our Future
How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now--Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything
Written by David Sirota

Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: March 15, 2011
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-0-345-51878-1 (0-345-51878-0)

Wall Street scandals. Fights over taxes. Racial resentments. A Lakers-Celtics championship. The Karate Kid topping the box-office charts. Bon Jovi touring the country. These words could describe our current moment—or the vaunted iconography of three decades past.

In this wide-ranging and wickedly entertaining book, New York Times bestselling journalist David Sirota takes... Read more >

What's Love Got to Do with It?

Written by Meredith Small

Format: Trade Paperback, 280 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: June 1, 1996
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-47702-4 (0-385-47702-3)

In this refreshingly down-to-earth exploration of human mating and sexuality, an acclaimed anthropologist looks at the fascinating intersection between the imperatives of our glands and genes, and the culture in which we live. Why do we fall in love with the people we do? Is there an alternative, more feminist, way... Read more >