Losing Culture: Nostalgia, Heritage, and Our Accelerated Times by David Berliner is a page-turner, perhaps an unlikely adjective for a book interwoven with disciplinary theory. Yet the discussion remains lively; it never strays from Berliner's engaging ethnographical accounts. The brevity of the book is inversely proportional to the scope of the author's deliberation and argument. In the introduction, he sets the discursive table with four brief vignettes: a popular French pamphlet lamenting erosion of national culture; Dutch tourists decrying disuse of traditional garb in Luang Prabang, Laos; a young man in Guinea-Conkary mourning the disappearance of his parents’ religious practices; and a UNESCO official declaring the agency's singular role in cultural preservation. The common threads, Berliner asserts, are the broadly shared sentiments that “cultures are being lost and that cultural transmission no longer works as it should” (p. 2). He examines the discourses that surround this perspective and the accompanying preservation tactics. In so doing, Berliner reflects on both anthropology and the work of anthropologists—indeed, all who undertake ethnographic research.Chapter 1, “Transmission Impossible in West Africa,” contrasts the materiality of a museum artifact with the ephemerality of undocumented, forsaken religious customs. The item of note, a snakelike mask once worn by Baga people of West Africa, seems to be all that remains of their pre-Islamic spiritualism, prompting a nostalgic response from Western museum-goers. Discourses of loss also exist among Bulongic people (a Baga subgroup) who, since converting to Islam, no longer transmit traditional rituals to succeeding generations. This chapter reveals fieldwork at its best. The fieldworker enters with a research plan (for Berliner, to overtly discuss earlier religious customs), but makes midcourse adjustments after encountering the conventions of the interlocutors. Researchers set aside assumptions; participants shape methodology. Despite the cessation of definite transmission, Berliner becomes privy to manifestations of pre-Islamic religion enduring on the margins: in hushed-up legends, quiet intimations, and transgressive conversations. By tracing nostalgic reminiscences for “old ways,” he eventually notices imprints of allegedly abandoned spiritual practices upon the present.One of the book's many achievements is its contribution to nostalgia and memory studies. Chapter 2, “UNESCO, Bureaucratic Nostalgia, and Cultural Loss,” outlines several varieties of nostalgia: exonostalgia (nostalgia for a past one has never experienced), endonostalgia (nostalgia for a personal past, exemplified by Proust's madeleine account), and patrimonial nostalgia (nostalgia in action that attempts to preserve another's lifeways and cultures irrespective of their thoughts on the matter). According to Berliner, this later type describes UNESCO's activities at the heritage site Luang Prabang. The fear of cultural loss refracted through transnational bureaucracies and large budgets prompts “the paradox of UNESCO as a force for both preservation and globalization” (p. 53). Berliner explains: “Here is an institution whose policies seek to preserve both places . . . and cultural practices . . . but which also produce a dynamic effect on the very places and practices they aim to protect” (p. 61). When UNESCO staff members believe that they alone ensure cultural transmission and preservation, they resemble former colonizers who deliberately stymied local expression. Berliner's interlocutors are broadly culled: residents, expatriates, tourists, and heritage experts, and their collective testimony create a complex web of concerns and agendas. The unresolved question remains: What should UNESCO be doing? Although culture and tradition, with attendant processes of transmission, are fluid, efforts like those of UNESCO can result in rendering these dynamics static. Money, power, and attention affix fluctuating cultural practices to a spatial-temporal context. Once negotiated on the ground by in-group members, matters are now subject to global debate. (Worthy companion pieces include Dorothy Noyes’ essay, “The Judgment of Solomon” [Cultural Analysis 5, 2006] and Michael Dylan Foster and Lisa Gilman's edited volume UNESCO on the Ground [Indiana University Press, 2015].)Chapter 3, “Toward the End of Societies?” traces the evolution of anthropology, identifying the first disciplinary trope as “cultural disappearance” (p. 68). Anthropologists such as Bronisław Malinowski, Franz Boas, and E. E. Evans-Pritchard assumed they were documenting “primitive” lifeways soon to vanish. “Fear of loss” became a pervasive epistemology encoded within the discipline. This rhetoric of cultural decline, which Berliner labels “exonostalgia,” has been institutionalized by universities, museums, and lately by UNESCO (p. 72). However, beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, anthropologists oscillated. Besides loss, they also documented modes and methods of resilience, noticing that customs proved unexpectedly tenacious, resurfacing in various guises amid external pressures of colonialism, capitalism, and globalism. This perspective was rooted in memory studies; “memory here means that the past does not evaporate, and that anthropologists are tasked with observing the continuity of representations, practices, emotions, and institutions, despite sometimes radical societal changes” (p. 76). The chapter concludes with an adroit assessment synthesizing both disciplinary inclinations. Exonostalgia itself has proven resilient, continuing to exist in anthropologists’ ongoing sentimentality for the local and the locals. A form of nostalgia, therefore, endures as a predisposition of the fieldworker. The solution is not envisaging a radical, rational detachment (which is impossible), but rather embracing empathic connection, further discussed in subsequent chapters.Any course concerning ethnography should require chapter 4, “The Plastic Anthropologist,” which is a helpful pre-fieldwork read and prescient stand-alone essay. The near impossibility of preparing a would-be ethnographer for initial fieldwork makes one constantly hoping for essays that shed light on the task. Berliner addresses personal, social, and ethical conundrums of fieldwork: how participatory should one be regarding participant-observation? Which lines will one not cross, due to personal moral convictions or concern for over-connecting with the host culture? How should one, as an outsider, anticipate the personal (and permanent) reconfigurations of identity resulting from spending extended time with others? In seeking knowledge, the chameleon-like ethnographer embodies an empathic and imitative posture vis-à-vis the other, which although not without risks, nevertheless demonstrates the possibility for vital engagement in present-day divisiveness and taking sides.The concluding chapter addresses thorny problems around the perennial question: In anthropological endeavors, how are others approached, understood, and written about? Berliner pleas for empathy as an epistemological commitment. Rather than paternalistic efforts to preserve the lifeways of others, empathy carries possibilities for imagining solidarity. Another fraught issue that Berliner unpacks concerns identifying cultural boundaries and markers. Corporate memory, critical for preserving minority communities and for addressing historical trauma, can be leveraged for nationalist projects or devolve into essentialist categorization. There is no foolproof way to avoid these dangers, yet broad democratization of memory mitigates the peril. “In a democratic society, the duty of memory does not belong to particular groups; any group of victims is free to use it reflexively” (p. 99). Some will disagree, yet an empathic individual will discern when empathy itself requires a pause in the striving to know the other.Losing Culture is equal parts contemporary critique, best practice theorization, and state-of-the-field appraisal. First published in French as Perdre sa culture (2018), Dominic Horsfall's English translation has enhanced the book's overall readability by rendering discipline-specific terms accessible. Thus, it becomes a timely meditation on how and what ethnographers might contribute not only to their unique, niche worlds, but also to the world at large.