Race, Language and Culture

This lengthy collection consists of dozens of essays by American anthropologist Franz Boas, spanning his academic career and accompanied by more than 100 illustrations and tables. 

Organized into the titular categories of Race, Language and Culture, the essays in this book elaborate on numerous pertinent subjects. Topics are wide-ranging and diverse, concerning specific tribes or peoples which Boas had studied at various times, or more general discussions on demographics, morphology and heredity of traits. Book reviews of his contemporaries’ works are thorough, with the author’s engagement with his fellow academics working in ethnology and anthropology evident. Although scholarly in style, the essays of Franz Boas are readable; he strove to make subjects comprehensible to a wider audience.

The Language portion of the book is perhaps the most intensive: Boas examines the linguistic structures present in the dialects of various Native American languages, organizing their pronunciations with symbols. The Culture essays are more varied; from general discussions of investigative principles, the establishment of folklore and legends in various tribal societies, to specific archaeological digs conducted in Mexico. At the conclusion of the book, three miscellaneous essays that explain Boas’s approach to ethnological and geographical studies are appended.