Franz Boas : the early years, 1859-1906 /

Cole's book covers Franz Boas's life to 1906, when he left the American Museum of Natural History after several frustrating years and a final disagreement over exhibition policy. That career break pushed Boas fully into Columbia University and is thus a fitting close to this account of the early years of Boas's personal, professional, and intellectual life. Unfortunately there will be no second volume; Cole died shortly before completing this major work based on the extraordinary mass of archival material available. His satisfying biography discloses the person and the anthropologist. It also recounts the fascinating politics and careerism in the rise of professional anthropology in the US. Boas had succeeded in keeping a position in two major loci of professional anthropology, the museum and the university, serving as an administrator, curator, teacher, and researcher. F.W. Putnam and Clark Wissler, as well as Boas, found that balancing act becoming impossible as the discipline expanded and professionalized. Cole also recounts Boas's family, childhood, and education in Westphalia, Germany, where he was part of an educated and politically liberal Jewish bourgeoisie. The book is well written, researched in detail, a good read, and important. For all anthropology collections. Upper-division undergraduates and above. R. Berleant-Schiller; University of Connecticut

Cole intended for this book to be the first volume of a two-part biography of Franz Boas, considered by many to be the father of modern cultural anthropology. Unfortunately, Cole died before he could put finishing touches on this first volume; but, nonetheless, Cole has succeeded in re-creating the first part of Boas' life by using the plenitude of correspondence between members of the Boas family and other materials, such as field notes and slides. We witness Boas struggling through the German school system, his early expeditions to the Arctic Circle, and his early years in the U.S. at the American Museum of Natural History. In writing a fascinating account about a man about whom, surprisingly, little has been written before, Cole gives the reader rare insight into the changing world of twentieth-century anthropology. --Julia Glynn