Beginning in 1925, when at twenty-three she embarked on her first field work in Samoa, Mead sent family and friends these letters from the field “to make a little more real for them” the exotic worlds that absorbed her.

In this complement to her bestselling memoir Blackberry Winter, Mead has assembled selected letters she wrote from Samoa in 1925-26; from Peré Village, Manus, in the Admiralty Islands, in 1928-29; from the Arapesh, Mundugumor, and Tchambuli, New Guinea, in 1932-33; from Bali and the Iatmul, New Guinea, in 1936-39; from Manus again in 1953; and during brief visits in the sixties and seventies to Manus, several new Guinea sites, and Montserrat in the West Indies.

Enhanced by more than 100 photographs, these intelligent, vivid, frequently funny and sometimes poetic letters help us share with Mead “the unique, but also cumulative, experience of immersing oneself in the on-going life of another people, . . .attempting to understand mentally and physically this other version of reality.”

What did it truly mean to be a pioneering woman in science, living for decades among the most remote cultures of the South Pacific?

• A Pioneer’s Journey: From her first solo fieldwork in Samoa at age twenty-three to her final visits in the 1970s, witness the personal and intellectual evolution of one of the 20th century’s most important thinkers.
• Groundbreaking Ethnography: Go beyond formal studies and see the raw, unfiltered process of discovery through Mead’s candid, vivid, and often funny observations on everything from sacred rituals to the challenges of daily life.
• South Pacific Cultures: Travel to Samoa, Bali, and the remote villages of New Guinea—including the Manus, Arapesh, and Mundugumor—through the eyes of an anthropologist learning to see the world anew.
• A Visual Record: Experience these otherwise lost worlds through more than 100 photographs, many taken by Mead and her colleagues, that enhance and illuminate her intimate correspondence.