Tristes tropiques /

"Tristes Tropiques was an immensely popular bestseller when it was first published in France in 1955. Claude Lévi-Strauss's ground-breaking study of the societies of a number of Amazonian peoples is a cornerstone of structural anthropology and an exploration by the author of his own intell...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Lévi-Strauss, Claude (Author)
Other Authors: Russell, John, 1919-2008 (Translator), Weightman, John, 1915-2004 (Translator), Weightman, Doreen (Translator)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: New York : Atheneum, 1974.
Edition:[First complete American edition]
Subjects:
Description
Summary:"Tristes Tropiques was an immensely popular bestseller when it was first published in France in 1955. Claude Lévi-Strauss's ground-breaking study of the societies of a number of Amazonian peoples is a cornerstone of structural anthropology and an exploration by the author of his own intellectual roots as a professor of philosophy in Brazil before the Second World War, as a Jewish exile from Nazi-occupied Europe, and later as a world-renowned academic (he taught at New York's New School for Social Research and was French cultural attaché to the United States). Lévi-Strauss's central journey leads from the Amazon basin through the dense upland jungles of Brazil. There, among the Amerindian tribes--the Caduveo, Bororo, Nambikwara, and Tupi-Kawahib--he found "a human society reduced to its most basic expression." Lévi-Strauss's discussion of his fieldwork in Tristes Tropiques endures as a milestone of anthropology, but the book is also, in its brilliant diversions on other, more familiar cultures, a great work of literature, a vivid travelogue, and an engaging memoir--a demonstration of the marvelous mental agility of one of the century's most important thinkers."-- Amazon.
Item Description:Translation of: Tristes tropiques.
First published in English translation by John Russel by Hutchinson & Co. in London, 1961, under title: A world on the wane; Chapters xiv, xv, xvi, and xxxix of the French edition were omitted from this translation.
"An entirely new translation and the first complete rendering in English"--Translators' note, [page 11].
Physical Description:425 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates : black and white illustrations ; 25 cm
Bibliography:Includes index.
ISBN:068910572X
9780689105722