Eric R. Wolf (1923–1999)

Rated for my enjoyment factor, not for any scientific value. I am not qualified to rate that. Overall, it was interesting to read about the geologic and cultural history of middle-north America. I had to skim some of the beginning, but about the time of the Spanish invasion it began to be more interesting for me. The details of the politics and beliefs in Spain which led to the invasion and how that affected Spain as well as the new world was something I had not read about before. Also the examples of why the new world was not like Spain, even though the Spanish were the conquerors. This book was written in the 1950s, so I was a bit surprised that there was so little modern history in it.… (meer)

Just amazing book! The author is genius. It needs to be updated, but the truth that it represents has not changed till the present.
This is the second or third time I've read this book; it was the textbook for my class in pre-columbian mesoamerica anthropology class in my undergrad at National Hispanic University in San Jose california. My favorite chapter is the last one, called the "power seekers." Parts of it explain what is the class of men called machistas; it also explains how they came to be such a hateful group of people.

From the chapter "rise of the seed planters", on diet:
"So standardized is this diet and so invariable its adherence to maize, squash, beans, and chili that many observers have concluded that it must produce serious dietary deficiencies. Meat eaters and milk drinkers are, however, apt to pass uninformed judgments on the dietary norms of other cultures. Middle American Indians ate and still eat many foods in addition to the above, foods which may not suit the pallets of people whose taste derived from a tradition of animal husbandry coupled with grain agriculture. Laboratory analysis has discovered considerable quantities of protein, vitamins, and minerals in such middle American foods as axayacatl, a Highland moth, and its eggs (ahuauhtli) a very elegant caviar; in malva, a wild Highland plant which tastes like spinach; in cactus (nopal); in sesame and squash seeds; in peanuts and piñon nuts; in the red and white worms that infest the century plant; in the iguana, the large lizard of the tropical lowlands that tastes like frogs' legs, and it's roe; in turtles, snakes, triatomas (chumil), rats, and many other occasional additions to the daily diet."
They were way more healthy than the Europeans who infested them.

From the chapter "villages and holy towns":
"the earliest representation of such a ceremony [performance of magical rites] that has come down to us is probably the curious relief from a stone quarry in Jonacatepec, morelos. The relief depicts three priests in Olmec style regalia; they hold spades in the air, while a fourth showers the land with his own seed from his erect penis."
… (meer)

An analysis of the revolutions in Mexico, Russia, China, Vietnam, Algeria, and Cuba in the first half of the twentieth century.

The author approaches the subject from an anthropological perspective, seeking to analyze the social forces and groups that contributed to the development and outcome of each revolution. The result can be termed a "non-Marxist class analysis" of these historical events. The conclusion suggests that the fundamental cause of these upheavals was ultimately a peasant reaction to the radical social changes brought by the spread of North Atlantic capitalism and the commodification of land, labor, and money.

One minor complaint I had with this book was that the author assumes the reader is familiar with the events of each revolution, and spends hardly any time describing the wars themselves, devoting almost all the space in each chapter to describing the context in which each one occurred. As a "casual" reader I would have preferred a little more description of how each conflict actually unfolded.

Overall, this book provided an interesting and insightful examination of this unprecedented period of history.… (meer)