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Geisha

Liza Dalby · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
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AnthropologyJapanNonfictionSociology
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The Japanese Mind: Understanding Contemporary Japanese Culture

Roger J. Davies, Osamu Ikeno · 270 pages

AnthropologyJapanNonfictionCultural Identity
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Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman

Marjorie Shostak, Nisa · 402 pages

This book is the story of the life of Nisa, a member of the !Kung tribe of hunter-gatherers from southern Africa's Kalahari desert. Told in her own words--earthy, emotional, vivid--to Marjorie Shostak, a Harvard anthropologist who succeeded, with Nisa's collaboration, in breaking through the immense barriers of language and culture, the story is a fascinating view of a remarkable woman.

AnthropologyMemoir & BiographyNonfictionCultural Identity
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Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea · 346 pages

Autobiographical account of two year's spent in a village of southern Iraq. The author accompanied her husband, who was doing anthropological research in the area.

AnthropologyMemoir & BiographyNonfictionCultural Identity
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The Other Face of the Moon

Claude Levi-Strauss, Claude L?vi-Strauss · 166 pages

AnthropologyJapanNonfiction
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

Anne Fadiman · 341 pages

When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. Parents and doctors both wanted the best for Lia, but their

AnthropologyMemoir & BiographyNonfictionCultural Identity
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Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization

Arjun Appadurai · 229 pages

"Offering a new framework for the cultural study of globalization, Modernity at Large shows how the imagination works as a social force in today's world, providing new resources for identity and energies for creating alternatives to the nation-state, whose era some see as coming to an end. Appadurai examines to current epoch of globalization, which is characterized by the twin forces of mass migra

AnthropologyNonfictionSociologyCultural Identity
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AnthropologyNonfictionCultural IdentitySociology
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Primates of Park Avenue

Wednesday Martin · 256 pages

Like an urban Dian Fossey, Wednesday Martin decodes the primate social behaviors of Upper East Side mothers in a memoir about her adventures assimilating into that most secretive and elite tribe. After marrying a man from the Upper East Side and moving to the neighborhood, Wednesday Martin struggled to fit in. Drawing on her background in anthropology and primatology, she tried looking at her new

AnthropologyMemoir & BiographyNonfictionSociology
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Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan

Bruce Feiler · 321 pages

Learning to Bow has been heralded as one of the funniest, liveliest, and most insightful books ever written about the clash of cultures between America and Japan. With warmth and candor, Bruce Feiler recounts the year he spent as a teacher in a small rural town. Beginning with a ritual outdoor bath and culminating in an all-night trek to the top of Mt. Fuji, Feiler teaches his students about Ameri

JapanMemoir & BiographyNonfictionCultural Identity
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JapanMemoir & BiographyNonfictionCultural Identity
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Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa

Katherine A. Dettwyler · 172 pages

AnthropologyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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Once Upon a Quinceanera: Coming of Age in the USA

Julia Alvarez · 288 pages

The bestselling author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents explores the phenomenon of the Latina ?sweet fifteen? celebrationThe quincea?era, the fifteenth birthday celebration for a Latina girl, is quickly becoming an American event. This legendary party is a sight to behold: lavish ball gowns, extravagant catered meals, DJs, limousines, and multi-tiered cakes. The must haves for a ?quince?

AnthropologyMemoir & BiographyNonfictionSociology
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Dead Men Do Tell Tales: Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist

William R. Maples · 292 pages

William Maples is blessed with an eerie but powerful gift. From a skeleton, a skull, a mere fragment of burnt thighbone, he can deduce the age, gender and ethnicity of a corpse, and the manner in which the victim was dispatched; his gift has sealed the doom of many a killer. His skill is to read the tales of death written on the bones of the dead, and in this fascinating book he revisits his stran

AnthropologyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil

Nancy Scheper-Hughes · 621 pages

"When lives are dominated by hunger, what becomes of love? When people are assaulted by daily acts of violence and untimely death, what happens to trust? Set in the celebrated parched lands of Northeast Brazil, Death Without Weeping is a luminously written, "womanly hearted" account of the everyday experience of scarcity, sickness, and death that centers on the lives of the women and children of a

AnthropologyNonfictionSociology
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Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture

Marvin Harris · 276 pages

This book challenges those who argue that we can change the world by changing the way people think. The author shows that no matter how bizarre a people's behavior may seem, it always stems from concrete social and economic conditions. It is by isolating and identifying these conditions that we will be able to understand and cope with some of our own apparently senseless life styles. In a devastat

AnthropologyNonfictionSociology
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Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies

Margaret Mead · 335 pages

Focusing on three tribes from New Guinea, the author advances the theory that many so-called masculine and feminine characteristics are not based on fundamental sex differences, but reflect the cultural conditioning of different societies.

AnthropologyNonfictionSociology
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Confessions of a Texan in Tokyo

Grace Buchele Mineta · 188 pages

JapanMemoir & BiographyNonfictionCultural Identity
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The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays

Clifford Geertz · 470 pages

In The Interpretation of Cultures, the most original anthropologist of his generation moved far beyond the traditional confines of his discipline to develop an important new concept of culture. This groundbreaking book, winner of the 1974 Sorokin Award of the American Sociological Association, helped define for an entire generation of anthropologists what their field is ultimately about.

AnthropologyNonfictionSociology
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Geisha, a Life

Mineko Iwasaki, Rande Brown · 297 pages

"Celebrated as the most successful geisha of her generation, Mineko Iwasaki was only five years old when she left her parents' home for the world of the geisha. For the next twenty-five years, she would live a life filled with extraordinary professional demands and rich rewards. She would learn the formal customs and language of the geisha and study the ancient arts of Japanese dance and music. S

JapanNonfictionMemoir & BiographyCultural Identity
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The Good Shufu: Finding Love, Self, and Home on the Far Side of the World

Tracy Slater · 323 pages

"In this memoir of travel and love, a fiercely independent American woman finds everything she ever wanted in the most unexpected place. Shufu. In Japanese it means "housewife," and it's the last thing Tracy Slater ever thought she'd call herself. A writer and academic, Tracy had carefully constructed a life she loved in her beloved hometown of Boston. But everything was upended when she fell head

JapanMemoir & BiographyNonfictionCultural Identity
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Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science

William M. Bass, Jon Jefferson · 304 pages

There is no scientist in the world like Dr. Bill Bass. A pioneer in forensic anthropology, Bass created the world's first laboratory dedicated to the study of human decomposition—three acres of land on a hillside in Tennessee where human bodies are left to the elements. His research at "the Body Farm" has revolutionized forensic science, helping police crack cold cases and pinpoint time of death.

AnthropologyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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AnthropologyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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La Nostalgie heureuse

Amelie Nothomb · 150 pages

Autobiographical narration of the author's childhood in Japan.

JapanMemoir & BiographyNonfictionCultural Identity

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