The Ancient City, Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, published in 1877.
Clear, compelling, confident prose. Remarkable insight into how Mediterranean minds worked in the pre-Christian era, how religious concepts utterly foreign to me were the primary drivers of so much behaviour. Monogamy, power of female heads of household, how Rome was able to conquer and absorb its conquests while other cities could not.
Like a thunderclap, so much of my ancient history reading suddenly made sense in a visceral, deep and convincing way.
As a taste, here is one of the highlighted sections amazon allowed me to keep:
"
The wife, thus married, also worships the dead; but it is not to her own ancestors that she carries the funeral repast. She no longer has this right. Marriage has completely detached her from the family, and has interrupted all the religious relations that she had with it. Her offerings she carries to the ancestors of her husband; she is of their family; they have become her ancestors. Marriage has been for her a second birth; she is henceforth the daughter of her husband; filae loco, say the jurists. One could not belong to two families, or to two domestic religions; the wife belongs entirely to her husband's family, and to his religion. We shall see the consequences of this rule in the right of succession. The institution of sacred marriage must be as old in the Indo-European race as the domestic religion; for the one could not exist without the other. This religion taught man that the conjugal union was something more than a relation of the sexes and a fleeting affection, and united man and wife by the powerful bond of the same worship and the same belief. The marriage ceremony, too, was so solemn, and produced effects so grave, that it is not surprising that these men did not think it permitted or possible to have more than one wife in each house. Such a religion could not admit of polygamy.
"
I highlighted so many passages that, for the first time in over 500 books on my kindle, I learned that amazon limits how much you can highlight in any given book.
Noble Savages - Napoleon Changnon. Many readers may be familiar with it. For those who are not, it is (from the author's perspective) a record of an anthropologist who dares to record the reality of modern, pre-technology culture rather than the fairytale. His other books focus more on the anthropology itself and this one is on the meta-issue of the politicisation of anthropology.
Germania by by Publius Cornelius Tacitus. Even though most of the tribes he covers are better regarded as Celts (his description of their "rutillae comae," or red hair, gives a clue) and even though he lacks the impartiality of modern anthropologists, this is an invaluable description of the alien world of Europe before Christianity.
Human Family Systems by Pierre Van Den Berghe. This book provides an excellent introduction to kinship systems, about which most people know woefully little.
"The WEIRDest People in the World" Attempts to assess what is different about "the west" that made it so successful (for the last 500 years at least) and what caused it.
"Travels in SiberiaтАЭ by Ian Frazier. Nonfiction but reads like (excellent) fiction in parts, about the authorтАЩs van ride from St. Petersburg to the Pacific, with incredible anecdotes and fascinating historical asides.
Anthropology
The Ancient City, Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, published in 1877.
Clear, compelling, confident prose. Remarkable insight into how Mediterranean minds worked in the pre-Christian era, how religious concepts utterly foreign to me were the primary drivers of so much behaviour. Monogamy, power of female heads of household, how Rome was able to conquer and absorb its conquests while other cities could not.
Like a thunderclap, so much of my ancient history reading suddenly made sense in a visceral, deep and convincing way.
As a taste, here is one of the highlighted sections amazon allowed me to keep:
"
The wife, thus married, also worships the dead; but it is not to her own ancestors that she carries the funeral repast. She no longer has this right. Marriage has completely detached her from the family, and has interrupted all the religious relations that she had with it. Her offerings she carries to the ancestors of her husband; she is of their family; they have become her ancestors. Marriage has been for her a second birth; she is henceforth the daughter of her husband; filae loco, say the jurists. One could not belong to two families, or to two domestic religions; the wife belongs entirely to her husband's family, and to his religion. We shall see the consequences of this rule in the right of succession. The institution of sacred marriage must be as old in the Indo-European race as the domestic religion; for the one could not exist without the other. This religion taught man that the conjugal union was something more than a relation of the sexes and a fleeting affection, and united man and wife by the powerful bond of the same worship and the same belief. The marriage ceremony, too, was so solemn, and produced effects so grave, that it is not surprising that these men did not think it permitted or possible to have more than one wife in each house. Such a religion could not admit of polygamy.
"
I highlighted so many passages that, for the first time in over 500 books on my kindle, I learned that amazon limits how much you can highlight in any given book.
Noble Savages - Napoleon Changnon. Many readers may be familiar with it. For those who are not, it is (from the author's perspective) a record of an anthropologist who dares to record the reality of modern, pre-technology culture rather than the fairytale. His other books focus more on the anthropology itself and this one is on the meta-issue of the politicisation of anthropology.
Germania by by Publius Cornelius Tacitus. Even though most of the tribes he covers are better regarded as Celts (his description of their "rutillae comae," or red hair, gives a clue) and even though he lacks the impartiality of modern anthropologists, this is an invaluable description of the alien world of Europe before Christianity.
Human Family Systems by Pierre Van Den Berghe. This book provides an excellent introduction to kinship systems, about which most people know woefully little.
Moral Mazes by Robert Jackall. Does studying our own society count as anthropology, or is that just sociology?
I vote for calling it anthropology.
Edit: After all, also bosses are human.
"The WEIRDest People in the World" Attempts to assess what is different about "the west" that made it so successful (for the last 500 years at least) and what caused it.
"Travels in SiberiaтАЭ by Ian Frazier. Nonfiction but reads like (excellent) fiction in parts, about the authorтАЩs van ride from St. Petersburg to the Pacific, with incredible anecdotes and fascinating historical asides.