Franz Boas

“Zumwalt’s lively style and abundant use of quotes make readers feel they are present.”-A. B. Kehoe, Choice “Rosemary LÉvy Zumwalt knows Franz Boas, his world, and his students as no one else. In this powerful work she presents the struggles for both scientific truth and social justice of the person who made American anthropology the powerful intellectual, scholarly, and moral endeavor it was for most of the twentieth century.”-Herbert S. Lewis, author of In Defense of Anthropology: An Investigation of the Critique of Anthropology “This even-handed, intimate portrait of Franz Boas is timely. Zumwalt hangs Boas’s North Star-that the more you learn of our world and individuals in it, the less you will feel yourself and your native language and belief system superior to others-in today’s dark skies.”-Nancy Mattina, author of Uncommon Anthropologist: Gladys Reichard and Western Native American Culture “The biography of Franz Boas is a very important subject, especially to those interested in the history of anthropology, and I expect this volume, along with the first, will become a standard historical resource in coming years. This book makes an important contribution as an account of Boas’s career emphasizing his ongoing struggles at Columbia. This makes for a poignant narrative and a striking contrast with his growing fame and subsequent reputation.”-Grant Arndt, author of Ho-Chunk Powwows and the Politics of Tradition

Rosemary LÉvy Zumwalt is emerita vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college and professor emerita of anthropology at Agnes Scott College. She is the author of numerous books, including Franz Boas: The Emergence of the Anthropologist and American Folklore Scholarship: A Dialogue of Dissent, and is coauthor of Franz Boas and W. E. B. Du Bois at Atlanta University, 1906.