CHARLES KING is the author of seven books, including Midnight at the Pera Palace and Odessa, winner of a National Jewish Book Award. His essays and articles have appeared in the The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and The New Republic. He is a professor of international affairs and government at Georgetown University.
“Elegant and kaleidoscopic . . . This looks to be the perfect
moment for King’s resolutely humane book.”
—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
“Thoughtful, deeply intelligent, and immensely readable.”
—Alison Gopnik, The Atlantic
“King’s comprehensive archival research illuminates intellectual
giants . . . With a light yet unmistakable touch, King connects the
dots from Boas’s time to ours. He mentions President Donald Trump’s
describing of Mexicans as ‘rapists’ during the kickoff of his
presidential campaign, and we get the point: The reduction of human
beings to types—people stereotyped as inferior and menacing,
deserving of being keep out or cast out—is a clear and present
danger. Reading Gods of the Upper Air, though, provides
inspiration. The anthropology of equality tells us that every
population is as fully human as any other, and deserving of
understanding and compassion.”
—Barbara J. King, NPR.org
“[Gods of the Upper Air] offers a vitally relevant way to frame the
ugly spectre of racism as it resurfaces in our politics . . . Now,
more than ever, we need to recognise how Boas and others developed
an alternative vision of humanity. Understanding this oft-ignored
intellectual history is a first step towards defending it.”
—Gillian Tett, Financial Times
“[King] succeeds in bringing Mead and her fellow travelers into
sharp focus as they pioneered a new field and documented mankind’s
many-splendored diversity in a positive, rather than a divisive,
light.”
—David Holahan, USA Today
“An intellectual adventure story of the best sort—elegantly
written, thought-provoking, and full of biographical riches.”
—Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live and At the Existentialist
Cafe
“A masterful history of a group of maverick thinkers in the early
20th century who aimed to dethrone the
eugenicists dominating racial thought. With eugenics ascendant
again, King’s story is a vital book for our times.”
—Ibram X. Kendi, author of Stamped from the Beginning: The
Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, winner of the 2016
National Book Award
“Deeply thought-provoking and brilliantly written, Gods of the
Upper Air is a walk in the shoes of giants. Charles King takes you
on an unforgettable journey as daring anthropologists unravel the
profound mysteries of culture and mankind, and discover that they,
too, were only human.”
—David Hoffman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Dead Hand and
The Billion Dollar Spy
“This exciting—even entrancing—story traces the birth of a new
science in the early twentieth century, championed by a scrappy
genius who trained a cadre of bold women for the work. Charles King
writes with verve and authority as he follows the nation’s first
cultural anthropologists to far-flung field sites that suggested
antidotes to the racism and xenophobia of American society.”
—Dava Sobel, author of The Glass Universe and Longitude
“In any era, Gods of the Upper Air would be a scholarly
masterpiece—an elegantly written, wickedly perceptive account of
Franz Boas, the father of cultural anthropology, and his impact
upon the key moral issues of his time and ours. Mentoring
the likes of Margaret Mead and Zora Neale Hurston, Boas
employed the skills of scientific observation to argue that all
societies are part of a single, undivided humanity guided by
circumstance and history, but none superior to another. In
today’s deeply polarized world, Charles King’s stunning new
book reminds us of the brilliance of these renegade
anthropologists, and the work still to be done.”
—David Oshinsky, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Polio and
Bellevue
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