“Not since Frazer’s Golden Bough has anyone achieved such a grand synthesis of world mythology. Boldly swimming upstream against the present scholarly emphasis on difference and context, Witzel assembles massive evidence for a single, prehistoric,...

“Unique and important . . . Patterns of Culture is a signpost on the road to a freer and more tolerant life.” — New York Times A remarkable introduction to cultural studies, Patterns of Culture...

“The Perennial Philosophy,” Aldous Huxley writes, “may be found among the traditional lore of peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of...

This volume is a collection of the most important essays written by Franz Boas on the science of anthropology. “Franz Boas is the father of American anthropology and one of the founders of the field...

In this critical history of the rise and development of interest in myth from 1680 to 1860, sixty selections from authors of the period show how most of the current theories about myth were “”anticipated,...

First published in 1951, Shamanism soon became the standard work in the study of this mysterious and fascinating phenomenon. Writing as the founder of the modern study of the history of religion, Romanian émigré–scholar Mircea Eliade (1907-1986)...

Edward Chiera was a competent and respected scholar possessed of an ardent desire to make his research readily and entertainingly available to laymen. More remarkable, Chiera had extraordinary gifts to equal to his desire. They...