The book was published posthumously in 1944 and represents both a reevaluation and summing up of Malinowski's functional theory of culture. Polish born Bronislaw Malinowski is credited as one of the world’s greatest anthropologists, renowned for marrying the living realities of human life with the cold calculations of science. A necessary addition to the bookshelf of any collector of Malinowski’s work or student of anthropology, this classic volume is republished now with a introductory biography of the author.

Published, posthumously, this volume is both a summing up and a reformulation of Malinowski's functional theory of culture.

This book is a elaborated research about one of the most important Anthropologist in the history of the discipline, who initialized the modern Anthropology: Bronislaw Malinowski. This Social Scientist, with his methodological innovations, became one of the proponents of the 20th century transformation of speculative anthropology into the modern Science of Humanity and the master who trained an entire generation of anthropologists whose studies and theories dominated the academic world until the second half of the 20th century.

The best known, most often cited history of anthropological theory is finally available in paperback! First published in 1968, Harris's book has been cited in over 1,000 works and is one of the key documents explaining cultural materialism, the theory associated with Harris's work. This updated edition included the complete 1968 text plus a new introduction by Maxine Margolis, which discusses the impact of the book and highlights some of the major trends in anthropological theory since its original publication. RAT, as it is affectionately known to three decades of graduate students, comprehensively traces the history of anthropology and anthropological theory, culminating in a strong argument for the use of a scientific, behaviorally-based, etic approach to the understanding of human culture known as cultural materialism. Despite its popularity and influence on anthropological thinking, RAT has never been available in paperback_until now. It is an essential volume for the library of all anthropologists, their graduate students, and other theorists in the social sciences.