136 books
—
12 voters
Anthropology Books
Showing 1-50 of 53,964
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Paperback)
by (shelved 1768 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.33 — 1,300,652 ratings — published 2011
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Paperback)
by (shelved 1500 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.04 — 466,610 ratings — published 1997
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (Hardcover)
by (shelved 743 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.19 — 27,814 ratings — published 2021
Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Hardcover)
by (shelved 631 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.21 — 27,822 ratings — published 2011
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Paperback)
by (shelved 586 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.94 — 75,334 ratings — published 2004
The Interpretation of Cultures (Paperback)
by (shelved 554 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.11 — 3,898 ratings — published 1973
Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow (ebook)
by (shelved 546 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.18 — 292,734 ratings — published 2015
The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (Paperback)
by (shelved 475 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.90 — 3,912 ratings — published 1923
Tristes Tropiques (Paperback)
by (shelved 412 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.14 — 4,261 ratings — published 1955
The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (Paperback)
by (shelved 396 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.09 — 28,922 ratings — published 1991
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Paperback)
by (shelved 386 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.05 — 97,043 ratings — published 2005
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (Paperback)
by (shelved 383 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.21 — 90,322 ratings — published 1997
Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation (Paperback)
by (shelved 355 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.55 — 3,248 ratings — published 1928
Patterns of Culture (Paperback)
by (shelved 330 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.82 — 1,664 ratings — published 1934
Purity and Danger (Routledge Classics)
by (shelved 321 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.99 — 2,485 ratings — published 1966
The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? (Hardcover)
by (shelved 315 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.78 — 11,232 ratings — published 2012
The Golden Bough (Paperback)
by (shelved 304 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.02 — 8,777 ratings — published 1890
Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality (Hardcover)
by (shelved 291 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.97 — 32,017 ratings — published 2010
Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (Hardcover)
by (shelved 290 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.02 — 36,007 ratings — published 2018
The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Hardcover)
by (shelved 283 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.95 — 8,528 ratings — published 2015
Structural Anthropology (Paperback)
by (shelved 273 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.93 — 1,714 ratings — published 1958
Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (Paradigm)
by (shelved 267 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.23 — 3,572 ratings — published 2004
Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture (Paperback)
by (shelved 262 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.92 — 5,308 ratings — published 1974
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Paperback)
by (shelved 257 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.11 — 16,779 ratings — published 1983
The Savage Mind (Paperback)
by (shelved 245 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.93 — 1,788 ratings — published 1962
Euphoria (Hardcover)
by (shelved 242 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.87 — 106,822 ratings — published 2014
Orientalism (Paperback)
by (shelved 241 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.14 — 30,739 ratings — published 1978
Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture (Paperback)
by (shelved 235 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.76 — 2,605 ratings — published 1978
Argonauts of the Western Pacific (Paperback)
by (shelved 232 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.76 — 1,473 ratings — published 1922
Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures (Paperback)
by (shelved 228 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.09 — 1,777 ratings — published 1977
Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle (Hardcover)
by (shelved 225 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.97 — 6,254 ratings — published 2008
The Naked Ape (Paperback)
by (shelved 221 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.93 — 11,940 ratings — published 1967
Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Hardcover)
by (shelved 221 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.12 — 5,054 ratings — published 2017
Europe and the People Without History (Paperback)
by (shelved 221 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.14 — 1,298 ratings — published 1982
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Paperback)
by (shelved 220 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.12 — 45,847 ratings — published 1949
Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (Paperback)
by (shelved 214 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.85 — 4,303 ratings — published 1946
The Forest People (Paperback)
by (shelved 208 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.97 — 2,546 ratings — published 1961
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (Hardcover)
by (shelved 197 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.00 — 4,092 ratings — published 2007
In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (Paperback)
by (shelved 195 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.21 — 3,684 ratings — published 1995
The Power of Myth (Paperback)
by (shelved 190 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.26 — 54,338 ratings — published 1988
Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (updated with a new preface)
by (shelved 187 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.99 — 1,501 ratings — published 1986
Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman (Paperback)
by (shelved 182 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.90 — 2,715 ratings — published 1981
The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis, and Magic (Paperback)
by (shelved 181 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.92 — 5,516 ratings — published 1985
Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Paperback)
by (shelved 179 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.21 — 7,204 ratings — published 1998
The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy (Hardcover)
by (shelved 176 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.02 — 6,630 ratings — published 2013
Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande (Paperback)
by (shelved 175 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.85 — 1,176 ratings — published 1937
Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art (Hardcover)
by (shelved 174 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.04 — 3,899 ratings — published 2020
Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Centennial Book)
by (shelved 174 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.22 — 1,179 ratings — published 1992
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (Hardcover)
by (shelved 164 times as anthropology)
avg rating 3.88 — 4,156 ratings — published 2009
Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (Hardcover)
by (shelved 162 times as anthropology)
avg rating 4.14 — 6,248 ratings — published 2018
“Marriage," "mating," and "love" are socially constructed phenomena that have little or no transferable meaning outside any given culture. The examples we've noted of rampant ritualized group sex, mate-swapping, unrestrained casual affairs, and socially sanctioned sequential sex were all reported in cultures that anthropologists insist are monogamous simply because they've determined that something they call "marriage" takes place there. No wonder so many insist that marriage, monogamy, and the nuclear family are human universals. With such all-encompassing interpretations of the concepts, even the prairie vole, who "sleeps with anyone," would qualify.”
― Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
― Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
“The single most important human insight to be gained from this way of comparing societies is perhaps the realization that everything could have been different in our own society – that the way we live is only one among innumerable ways of life which humans have adopted. If we glance sideways and backwards, we will quickly discover that modern society, with its many possibilities and seducing offers, its dizzying complexity and its impressive technological advances, is a way of life which has not been tried out for long. Perhaps, psychologically speaking, we have just left the cave: in terms of the history of our species, we have but spent a moment in modern societies. (..) Anthropology may not provide the answer to the question of the meaning of life, but at least it can tell us that there are many ways in which to make a life meaningful.”
― Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology
― Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology












