Sex and Temperament in three Primitive Societies. By Margaret Mead, Assistant Curator of Ethnology, American Museum of Natural History. Published by  William Morrow & Co., New York, 1935.

The authoress has given us another splendid book as a result of her field work among primitive races. In her previous books, namely, Coining of Age in Samoa1 and Growing Up in New Guinea,2 she has given us the benefit of her observations on two considerably contrasted cultures. In her present work, however, partly as a result of good fortune and partly, I suspect, as a result of unrecorded good management, we have a very definite setting forth of two cultural patterns that are throughout diametrically the opposite of each other, and the study of a third pattern that is different from both.

Briefly, the study of the Arapesh culture is the study of a tribe in which the premium is put on the social qualities of gentleness, consideration and maternal qualities in both sexes. Every sacrifice is made to bring up the children in the best possible way, wherefore aggression and cruelty are frowned upon. In the Mundugumor society, however, the opposite in every respect prevails. Here instead of being a congenial group all interested in each other, we find the individuals, especially the men, exceedingly suspicious of one another, expressing a high degree of initiative, aggressiveness and cruelty. They are head hunters and cannibals, and the young boys when initiated into the rites of the society have, among other things, to kill a victim who is being prepared for the feast. There is little regard for the children, who are neglected, and we have a cultural pattern as a result the forces of which tend to disrupt the group, to keep them apart as a result of their mutual