{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20260414T161624Z","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0525432329?tag=bookfrontier-20","asin":"0525432329","authors":["Charles King"],"book_id":"9780525432326","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/gods-of-the-upper-air-0525432329","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780525432326.jpg?v=20260414T161624Z%3A2026-04-14T16%3A16%3A24Z","description":"NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 2020 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award From an award-winning historian comes a dazzling history of the birth of cultural anthropology and the adventurous scientists who pioneered it—a sweeping chronicle of discovery and the fascinating origin story of our multicultural world. A century ago, everyone knew that people were fated by their race, sex, and nationality to be more or less intelligent, nurturing, or warlike. But Columbia University professor Franz Boas looked at the data and decided everyone was wrong. Racial categories, he insisted, were biological fictions. Cultures did not come in neat packages labeled \"primitive\" or \"advanced.\" What counted as a family, a good meal, or even common sense was a product of history and circumstance, not of nature. In Gods of the Upper Air, a masterful narrative history of radical ideas and passionate lives, Charles King shows how these intuitions led to a fundamental reimagining of human diversity. Boas's students were some of the century's most colorful figures and unsung visionaries: Margaret Mead, the outspoken field researcher whose Coming of Age in Samoa is among the most widely read works of social science of all time; Ruth Benedict, the great love of Mead's life, whose research shaped post-Second World War Japan; Ella Deloria, the Dakota Sioux activist who preserved the traditions of Native Americans on the Great Plains; and Zora Neale Hurston, whose studies under Boas fed directly into her now classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God . Together, they mapped civilizations from the American South to the South Pacific and from Caribbean islands to Manhattan's city streets, and unearthed an essential fact buried by centuries of prejudice: that humanity is an undivided whole. Their revolutionary findings would go on to inspire the fluid conceptions of identity we know today. Rich in drama, conflict, friendship, and love, Gods of the Upper Air is a brilliant and groundbreaking history of American progress and the opening of the modern mind.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9780525432326","publication_date":"20200714","publisher":"Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group","slug":"gods-of-the-upper-air","subtitle":"How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century","title":"Gods of the Upper Air"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"SOC002020","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Physical Anthropology","score":0.7772,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"SOC002010","confidence_band":"medium","label":"How Cultures Work","score":0.7764,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"SOC026040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Social Theory","score":0.7629,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"SOC002020","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Physical Anthropology","score":0.7772,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"SOC002010","confidence_band":"medium","label":"How Cultures Work","score":0.7764,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"SOC026040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Social Theory","score":0.7629,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"HIS036060","confidence_band":"high","label":"20th-Century America","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"HIS051000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Exploration & Discovery","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"SOC002010","confidence_band":"high","label":"How Cultures Work","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"Physical Anthropology","score":0.7772,"slug":"physical-anthropology"},{"label":"How Cultures Work","score":0.7764,"slug":"how-cultures-work"},{"label":"Social Theory","score":0.7629,"slug":"social-theory"}],"reader_fit":["Good for readers who enjoy Physical Anthropology","Good for fans of History","Good for readers who enjoy Physical Anthropology and How Cultures Work."],"related_lists":[{"intro":"","slug":"shelf-soc026040-social-theory","title":"Social Theory Books","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/lists/shelf-soc026040-social-theory"}],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Chloë Duckworth","Dr. Chloë N. Duckworth"],"book_id":"9781788405799","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781788405799.jpg?v=20260414T161624Z%3A2026-04-14T16%3A16%3A24Z","score":14.3251,"title":"De-civilisation","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781788405799"},{"authors":["Michael Pollan"],"book_id":"9798217294534","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9798217294534.jpg?v=20260414T161624Z%3A2026-04-14T16%3A16%3A24Z","score":13.5138,"title":"A World Appears","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9798217294534"},{"authors":["DK","D.K. Publishing"],"book_id":"9780593966815","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780593966815.jpg?v=20260414T161624Z%3A2026-04-14T16%3A16%3A24Z","score":12.1293,"title":"The Anthropology Book","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780593966815"},{"authors":["Christine Webb","Christine E. Webb"],"book_id":"9780593543139","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780593543139.jpg?v=20260414T161624Z%3A2026-04-14T16%3A16%3A24Z","score":11.272,"title":"The Arrogant Ape","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780593543139"},{"authors":["Jared Diamond Ph.D.","Jared Diamond"],"book_id":"9780393354324","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780393354324.jpg?v=20260414T161624Z%3A2026-04-14T16%3A16%3A24Z","score":11.2661,"title":"Guns, Germs, and Steel","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780393354324"},{"authors":["Richard Wrangham","Richard W. Wrangham"],"book_id":"9781101970195","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781101970195.jpg?v=20260414T161624Z%3A2026-04-14T16%3A16%3A24Z","score":11.1787,"title":"The Goodness Paradox","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781101970195"},{"authors":["Paulette F. C. Steeves","Kristin Aikin Salada","University Press Audiobooks","& 0 more"],"book_id":"9781496202178","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781496202178.jpg?v=20260414T161624Z%3A2026-04-14T16%3A16%3A24Z","score":11.162,"title":"The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781496202178"},{"authors":["Noah Andre Trudeau"],"book_id":"9780060931865","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780060931865.jpg?v=20260414T161624Z%3A2026-04-14T16%3A16%3A24Z","score":10.7061,"title":"Gettysburg","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780060931865"}],"topics":[{"evidence_refs":["keyword:best friend gifts for her"],"label":"Best","score":0.2854,"slug":"best"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:first time dad gift"],"label":"Time","score":0.0909,"slug":"time"}],"what_you_get":["Reading lane: Physical Anthropology and How Cultures Work.","Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group."]},"llm_signals":null,"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":false,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":0,"goodreads_ratings_count":2435,"goodreads_reviews_count":397,"quality_score":0.9288}}