"The book is absolutely excellent . . . a unique fascinating account of the work of one of our leading anthropologists." —Colin M. Turnbull

"Her book is all about people. . . . The publishers say of it that 'field work in its personal and objective dimension is placed under a kind of microscope. The book is a must for all field workers in the social sciences.' That claim does not seem to me excessive." —Edmund Leach, New York Review of Books

"There are few books which are as informative of what it means to be a field-worker in social science as Hortense Powdermaker's Stranger and Friend. This book should be must reading both for scholars and students." —Seymour M. Lipset, Harvard University

"Stranger and Friend is a passionate plea for anthropology as a human discipline as well as a science, as an all-engrossing life experience as well as a profession, and increasingly as a subject in the curriculum of graduate and undergraduate studies." —Margaret Mead, American Museum of Natural History

"This is just the kind of book needed in anthropology today. It tells objectively, but in warm and human terms, how important research was done. It contributes to methodology and to the history of the science of anthropology." —Charles Wagley, Columbia University

"This is an essential book for anyone interested in the problems of an anthropologist at work." —Cornelius Osgood, Peabody Museum of Natural History

Life in Lesu is a vivid account of life in the late Stone-Age Melanesian society, by the first anthropologist and first white person to live there. Hortense Powdermaker, author of the widely praised Stranger and Friend, provides here both a mine of ethnological information and an absorbing personal view of daily life in a primitive community. Dr. Powdermaker lived for ten and a half months in Lesu, as a close observer and participant in the events of the village. She describes the individual and social life of the Lesu native from infancy to death: how society and family are organized; pregnancy and birth rites; the care and instruction of children; initiation ceremonies, marriage, and sexual life; knowledge, magic, and religion. Her tact inspired the confidence of the people, and they invited her to all their ceremonies, talked of their customs, taboos, and beliefs, and shared with her their rituals and tales. This edition includes Dr. Powdermaker's essay "Further Reflections on Lesu and Malinowski's Diary," in which she assesses the influence her Lesu experience has on her later, varied fieldwork and talks about the controversy over Malinowski's Diary in the light of her own association with him as a student.