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Ask a bookseller
Emily Bright

Ask a Bookseller: 'Gods of the Upper Air'

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A book cover with a mountain on it.
"Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century" by Charles King
Courtesy of publisher

Joy Vogelgesang of Kona Stories in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, recommended the nonfiction read "Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century" by Charles King.

The book explores the work of Franz Boaz, founder of cultural anthropology, and a circle of women scientists whose work 100 years ago helped inform our notions of identity today. Among the luminaries in this collective biography: field researcher Margaret Mead, Dakota Sioux activist Ella Deloria, and novelist Zora Neale Hurston of "Their Eyes Were Watching God."

Vogelgesang said she likes to recommend page-turning nonfiction works like this one when she's not sure what people have already read, and she said there's something to learn for everyone in King's book.