“Zumwalt leads us to know Franz Boas as never before, and we should be grateful. She gives us his engrossing love and life story across vast continents. She lets us walk with him into the classroom as well as into his home. She marvelously gives him voice, so we can discern his message for our time as well as in his.”

—Simon J. Bronner, author of American Folklore Studies: An Intellectual History

“Rosemary Zumwalt has written a biography of Franz Boas truly for the twenty-first century. Going beyond George Stocking and Douglas Cole, she focuses here on Boas’s early life in its historical and cultural setting. We eagerly await her second and concluding volume.”

—Ira Jacknis, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley