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Charles King Books

1 book·~10 min total read

Charles King is a professor of international affairs and government at Georgetown University. He is known for his works on history, politics, and culture, and has received several awards for his writing, including the Francis Parkman Prize.

Known for: Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century

Books by Charles King

Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century

Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century

biographies·10 min read

A narrative history exploring how a group of pioneering anthropologists, led by Franz Boas and including figures such as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, challenged prevailing ideas about race, sex, and culture in the twentieth century. The book traces their intellectual and personal journeys, showing how their work reshaped modern understandings of human diversity and equality.

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1

Franz Boas and the Revolt Against Scientific Racism

Franz Boas was born in 1858 in Germany, a product of the age of positivism and Darwinian enthusiasm. Yet even as a young man drawn to the natural sciences, he grew skeptical of easy generalizations. His early expeditions to Baffin Island and the Northwest Coast introduced him to the complexity of hu...

From Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century

2

Ruth Benedict and the Patterns of Culture

Ruth Benedict entered Boas’s seminar with a background steeped in literature and philosophy. The daughter of a scholarly family, she found in anthropology a language through which to reconcile her introspection with public meaning. Her seminal work, *Patterns of Culture*, argued that each society se...

From Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century

About Charles King

Charles King is a professor of international affairs and government at Georgetown University. He is known for his works on history, politics, and culture, and has received several awards for his writing, including the Francis Parkman Prize. His research often focuses on the intersection of anthropol...

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Charles King is a professor of international affairs and government at Georgetown University. He is known for his works on history, politics, and culture, and has received several awards for his writing, including the Francis Parkman Prize. His research often focuses on the intersection of anthropology, history, and social change.

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Charles King is a professor of international affairs and government at Georgetown University. He is known for his works on history, politics, and culture, and has received several awards for his writing, including the Francis Parkman Prize.

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