Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau

It is a prime-time story when free women of color use their spiritual gifts to fight slavery and Jim Crow, and white men in power accuse them of witchcraft. VOODOO QUEEN is the first biography of Marie Laveau, the mother and daughter of the same name who founded and led the Voodoo orders in nineteenth-century New Orleans. Booklist calls it —"inspired," "fresh," and "sensitive," "an astonishing and moving story . . . brilliantly deciphered."

Available March 2004

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A World Full of Women

Taking an ethnographic, cross-cultural approach, and drawing examples from the lives of ordinary women from cultures around the world, Martha Ward has written an accessible and engaging text beloved by instructors and students alike. Although men's issues are also covered, the text's female-centered perspective allows students to delve into the anthropology of women in human cultures. Topics include women's work in comparative cultures, the patterning of women's health cross-culturally, and the differences between men's and women's speech.

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The Hidden Life of Tirol

Split between the modern nations of Austria and Italy, the "holy land of Tirol" sits in the heart of the spectacular Alps, astride the mountains passes which link the edges of Europe. Tirol has some the most accessible and integrated social traditions in the world. But the deeper meaning of life in the region remain hidden.

The conventional categories of an ethnography are all here: religion, subsistence, marriage, land tenure, ethncity, agro-pastoralism, folklore, and inheritance. But the viewpoint is unconventional: the anthropologist is a fellow-traveler, taking readers on a tour to a region often visited and highly visible but rarely understood or studied. The study of European folklife and cohesive communal societies such as this have particular relevance today. In a world where ethnic groups and class tensions dominate the news, The Hidden Life of Tirol is a story of how people worked out these differences. Tiroleans have also constructed a local and very productive adaptation to environment, economy, ecology and the future.

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Nest in the Wind

On a magnificent island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean lives a people who eat dogs, grow quarter-ton yams in secret, stage extraordinarily dramatic feasts, have exceptionally relaxed attitudes about sex, and ritually share a potent drink called kava. Nest in the Wind is a very personal record of the field experiences of a female anthropolgist who managed a scientific research project on the lush, tropical island of Pohnpei in the early 1970s. Her picture of life on Pohnpei is gripping and accurate: living in a tin shack, speaking a new language, observing manners and following customs, finding food, adopting a son, earning a high title, becoming pregnant, and overcoming spells placed on her. The standard questions of ethnography, including family life, sex, childbirth, economics, politics, religion, medicine, magic and death, are thoroughly addressed, clothed gently in the easy format of personal experiences with real people.

Second Edition will be out in September 2004

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