Margaret Mead: Her Life and TimesMargaret Mead: The Making of an American Icon. By Nancy C. Lutkehaus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.

Abstract

This book is meant to be not about Margaret Mead but rather about her work in, responses to, and shaping of the society in which she lived. It is about how she came to be known, became famous, and finally rose to iconic status in America. In Nancy Lutkehaus’s words, “This book represents my analysis of Mead as a cultural icon . . . It is an analysis of the role of anthropology in twentieth-century America as seen through the lens of Mead’s celebrity and her role as a public intellectual . . . Fame is culturally and historically specific . . . Who becomes famous at any given time, and for what reasons, is fundamentally a cultural question” (p. xiii). It all began with Mead’s serendipitous rise to fame following the publication of her first book, Coming of Age in Samoa (1973 [1928]). Other books followed that also questioned widely received wisdoms about human nature as a fixed, natural, and, therefore, appropriate set of behaviors. At least in her own country, scientists and other people generally knew what childhood, adolescence, and gender were supposed to be like. When she found flexibility in these statuses related to learning in different societies based on different historically developed cultures, the public often welcomed her findings, while some anthropologists and other scientists questioned her fieldwork, her competence, her honesty, and her professional status. Nevertheless, she continued on, often cheered by her lay audiences and the popular press, and became a famous, popular figure. Why? Lutkehaus recounts the history of incidents, encounters, and social trends that brought Mead from the blessed (Mead thought) isolation of her fifth-floor office in the American Museum of Natural History, where Lutkehaus worked as her administrative assistant and then as her teaching assistant for six years, to her appearances on television in such iconic venues as The Tonight Show. People who knew nothing about anthropology remember her there because she was always entertaining. Her remarks, on television or in popular magazines, displayed her sense of humor and were often pithy,