A Story of Race, Sex, Gender and the Discovery of Culture

The Reinvention of Humanity

How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Remade Race, Sex and Gender

The riveting story of the intrepid women anthropologists who redefined race, sex, gender and normality in the early twentieth century.

Magnificent ... In this brilliantly written and deftly organised book, Charles King tells the story of how the study of humankind [was revolutionised] in the first half of the 20th century

Hugely informative and adhesively readable

Stunning ... every syllable seems perfectly positioned for pitch, stress, euphony and evocative power; the brilliant vignettes of the anthropologists’ leisure moments … the vividness with which their private lives, sexual intrigues and secret thoughts are captured … elegant and entertaining

An intellectual adventure story of the best sort - elegantly written, thought-provoking and full of biographical riches

SARAH BAKEWELL, author of At the Existentialist Café

Charles King, author of this illuminating biographical history [has] a great gift for nicely balanced epigrammatic prose … as King writes with a typically fine flourish, Boas can be seen to have been “on the front line of the greatest moral battle of our time” and he, along with the talented women who learnt from him, won out in the end

Written with verve and authority, this exciting – even entrancing – story follows the first cultural anthropologists to far-flung field sites that suggested antidotes to the racism and xenophobia of society

Stunning. Wickedly perceptive, a scholarly masterpiece

DAVID OSHINSKY, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Polio

Elegant and kaleidoscopic … this looks to be the perfect moment for King’s resolutely humane book

Deeply intelligent and immensely readable

The notion of cultural relativism was as unique in its way as was Einstein’s theory of relativity in the discipline of physics, a shattering of the European mind. This remarkable book explains why. Franz Boas’s intuitions and insights, distilled in theory and practice by generations of scholars, a lineage that includes Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Zora Neale Hurston, all brilliantly portrayed in the book, continue to inform contemporary anthropology, allowing the discipline to stand today as the antidote to nativism and the poisonous rhetoric of political demagogues. The entire purpose of anthropology, wrote Ruth Benedict, is to make the world safe for human differences. Never has the voice of anthropology been more important, and the arrival of this astonishing book can only be described as a gift to us all

Masterful. A vital book for our times

IBRAM X. KENDI, National Book Award-winning author of How To Be An Antiracist

Engaging, deeply thought-provoking and brilliantly written. Charles King takes you on an unforgettable journey as daring anthropologists unravel the profound mysteries of culture and mankind

DAVID HOFFMAN, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Dead Hand

A motley crew of rebellious young female scientists, inspired by a scar-faced mad-genius professor, boldly set out on intrepid journeys to study strange far-flung worlds, and discover that their own home-world is stranger than they thought. Along the way, they have tempestuous love-affairs, scary adventures, swashbuckling battles against armies of racists, sexists and eugenicists. In the end, they change our moral universe. Sounds like a sci-fi fantasy movie? It happened, here on Earth, nearly a century ago. A fascinating and important story, beautifully told

As told very engagingly by Charles King, their research turned upside down the then unshakeable assumption that certain people were innatley superior to others, because of their skin colour, culture and gender

Nothing short of magnificent … in many ways a deeply touching book. Charles King’s prose is immensely readable and perceptive and lends itself perfectly to telling one of the most fascinating tales of twentieth-century science

No one until now has told this story of anthropology’s rise to [its] ‘master key’ status … Charles King’s book … does this with both subtlety and panache … A compelling account of mutliculturalism’s intellectual precursors

King's book tells this many-layered, mostly forgotten story cogently and compellingly ... a gift to the field of anthropology and to us all

Franz Boas, whose achievements are set out in Charles King's The Reinvention of Humanity, recast the foundations of American anthropology. Against the prevailing political and intellectual orthodoxy, Boas and his students insisted that the basic unity of humankind was beyond dispute, and that within this unity there was no natural hierarchy of races, languages or cultures... That their ideas were found radical and strange is an indictment of their culture; that King's book seems timely is an indictment of our own

Charles King is Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University, Washington DC. His numerous books include the New York Times bestseller The Reinvention of Humanity (published in the US as Gods of the Upper Air), which was winner of The Francis Parkman Prize and shortlisted for the British Academy Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul; and Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams, which was winner of a National Jewish Book Award. His writing has appeared in the TLS, New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic and other publications.

*THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* 
 
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ACADEMY NAYEF AL-RODHAN PRIZE 2020* 
 
The riveting story of the pioneers who redefined conceptions of 'normality' in the early twentieth century. 
 
Under the guiding eye of cultural anthropologist Franz Boas, these scientist-explorers - most of them women - made intrepid journeys into far-flung communities all over the world, where they documented radically different social approaches that overturned Western assumptions about human diversity and 
challenged the era's scientific consensus. 
 
Here, the boundary-breaking lives and achievements of Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Ella Deloria and Zora Neale Hurston are brought fully into light for the first time, showing how their trailblazing discoveries helped shape the moral universe we inhabit today. 
 
*WINNER OF THE FRANCIS PARKMAN PRIZE 2020* 
 
*FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2019*

Charles King

Much closer to the teeming panorama of a novel like War and Peace than the narrow focus of most books about music history . . . It takes a rare blend of scholarship, ingenuity and empathy to weave together the stories of the mostly distressed souls who, one way or another, were connected with Messiah’s creation . . . King expertly juggles these individuals’ stories and a lot more besides . . . riveting

A mesmerizing journey through one of the most fascinating and creative moments in human history

This book reveals . . . fascinating historical truths . . . By following the links between individuals who are connected by varying degrees of separation with the work’s original creation and promotion, the author discovers that this one musical piece can stimulate joined-up insights into almost every significant aspect of its period: cultural, political, social, economic . . . His technique is often cinematic, focusing in and then panning out . . . In every case the macro picture is made vivid through the micro stories of individuals. Anyone who has ever written a historical narrative will know how hard it must have been for King to keep all the strands so expertly in play. The result is a truly informative, imaginative and engaging work

An absolute delight, beautifully told – and featuring a veritable Who’s Who of the Georgian era

Charles King’s fascinating history of Handel’s most famous work shows it in a whole new light . . . his book humanises the work’s exalted creators and demonstrates that the Messiah is not a pompous manifesto of faith but a troubled, often desperate quest for consolation . . . King . . . does a fine job of implicating Handel in the conflicts and contradictions of an unsettled society

Engaging and enthusiastic . . . King handles a very large cast of characters and source material with energy, intelligence and aplomb

Fascinating . . . King's narrative is wide-ranging, taking in not just the ailing composer and his circle – such as Thomas Coram, instigator of London's Foundling Hospital – but . . . how the Messiah coincided with the birth of the Enlightenment . . . In King's telling, the "Hallelujah Chorus" is just one rousing highlight among many

An adroitly threaded account of Handel’s life and achievements [that] opens out to a colourful gallery of 18th-century personalities who played a part in making Messiah what it was . . . lively . . . readable, well researched and rich with detail . . . an engaging narrative . . . full of understanding, setting a good example for any who would write about music . . . thoughtful and wide-ranging

A splendid writer . . . a meticulous researcher, [King] delivers surprises . . . fine and vivid sentences . . . fascinating

Compelling. King transforms Handel's world into a place we can all recognise and understand as the foundation for our own

A book rich with quirky characters living under strange circumstances: eccentric royals, visionary benefactors, financial collapses, theatrical triumphs and career meltdowns . . . we are plunged into the hectic mayhem of London life

In an engagingly written story . . . Charles King explores the background to a work which he considers the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. King’s discursive and genial approach . . . make for enjoyable reading . . . a bird’s-eye view of Georgian London, seasoned with apposite quotes from leading literary figures of the time, including Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift

What is it that thrills audiences and lifts the hearts of singers? In Every Valley Charles King . . . sets out to explain the Messiah’s enduring popularity . . . King interweaves the lives of several people directly or tangentially connected with it [and] accompanies these with analyses of Georgian life and thought . . . the result is a densely textured history of the era . . . [that] vividly evoke[s] its origins, creation and impact on eighteenth-century society, while also suggesting the message it conveys to our own

Smartly written . . . In explaining the social and biographical background of the story of Messiah, King brings the masterpiece to life — and keeps it alive

King uses Handel’s Messiah, possibly “the greatest piece of participatory art ever created”, as a hub whose spokes radiate outward to a host of key historical forces and personalities that characterize 18th-century Britain

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

A work of vivid social and cultural commentary, it functions also as an in-depth study of artistic creation, how Messiah came to be, but also of the unstoppable spigot that was Handel’s musical imagination

A book of power and glory, brimming with emotion and dazzling in its reach

Charles King shows how Handel’s epic work, the Messiah, sprang not from one solitary composer’s genius but from the dramatic interplay of eighteenth-century lives and their times. Fascinating and accessible to all

Vividly depicting life in Britain during the turbulence of the 1700s, Charles King celebrates Handel's Messiah as a glorious beacon of hope

Charles King’s erudition is remarkable but never obtrusive, for he is a wonderful story-teller. Every Valley is eighteenth century history as page-turner, evoking both tears and laughter

A delicious history of music, power, love, genius, royalty and adventure, beautifully told. Unforgettable

An interesting biography dealing with events and characters with whom Handel’s life became entangled

If you want to understand how the literature, music, history and economics of an era intertwine, then Every Valley is a book you should read… it reads like a novel… this is a grand read

The Story of Handel’s Messiah

London - Dublin, 1741-42. 
An actress mired in scandal plans her escape from an abusive husband. 
A penniless sea captain sets out to rescue the city’s abandoned infants. 
An African Muslim and former captive in the colonies becomes a celebrity. 
A grieving political dissident seeks release from his torment. 
And a great composer to kings – George Frideric Handel – now ill and straining to keep an audience’s attention, faces a decision that will secure his place in history. 
 
Evoking a pivotal moment at the birth of modernity, a time of fear, conspiracy and uprising, and featuring some of the most unusual and brilliant personalities of the eighteenth century, Every Valley is a cinematic and moving drama of hope in the darkness and the entangled lives that shaped a masterpiece.

Charles King

Praise for Every Valley

Much closer to the teeming panorama of a novel like War and Peace than the narrow focus of most books about music history . . . It takes a rare blend of scholarship, ingenuity and empathy to weave together th ...

A mesmerizing journey through one of the most fascinating and creative moments in human history

This book reveals . . . fascinating historical truths . . . By following the links between individuals who are connected by varying degrees of separation with the work’s original creation and promotion, the author d ...

Much closer to the teeming panorama of a novel like War and Peace than the narrow focus of most books about music history . . . It takes a rare blend of scholarship, ingenuity and empathy to weave together th ...

A mesmerizing journey through one of the most fascinating and creative moments in human history

This book reveals . . . fascinating historical truths . . . By following the links between individuals who are connected by varying degrees of separation with the work’s original creation and promotion, the author d ...

Much closer to the teeming panorama of a novel like War and Peace than the narrow focus of most books about music history . . . It takes a rare blend of scholarship, ingenuity and empathy to weave together th ...

A mesmerizing journey through one of the most fascinating and creative moments in human history

This book reveals . . . fascinating historical truths . . . By following the links between individuals who are connected by varying degrees of separation with the work’s original creation and promotion, the author d ...

Books by Charles King

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