Book cover of With a Daughter's Eye: Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson

Book description

In "With a Daughter's Eye," writer and cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson looks back on her extraordinary childhood with two of the world's legendary anthropologists, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. This deeply human and illuminating portrait sheds new light on her parents' prodigious achievements and stands alone as an important…

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Why read it?

1 author picked With a Daughter's Eye as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The reader gets a three-for-one deal in this incredibly thoughtful book: an intimate look at two towering anthropologists by their daughter, a distinguished anthropologist herself. Mary Catherine Bateson understood her difficult parents and their groundbreaking work as well as anyone could.

Talking to her father, she wrote, was “a form of argument that was also a dance.” Her mother was “a one-person conference.” The reader gets to know each member of this remarkable family through insightful anecdotes, rare family photos, conceptual diagrams, and lucid prose.

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On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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