Author Guide · Anthropology
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In 1925 Margaret Mead, then 23, sailed to American Samoa to find out whether the stress of adolescence was biology or culture. She spent months on the small island of Taʻū, living among the girls and young women she studied, and the book that came out of it, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), made her the best-known anthropologist in America. She worked at the American Museum of Natural History in New York from 1926 until the end of her life, returned again and again to the Pacific, and wrote for a general audience as readily as for scholars, including a monthly column in Redbook. Five years after her death, the anthropologist Derek Freeman attacked her Samoan work, and the argument has never quite ended. This guide covers her ten key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 key books · 1928–1972 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Margaret Mead wrote or co-wrote more than twenty books. The best known are Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), Male and Female (1949) and her memoir Blackberry Winter (1972). Start with Coming of Age in Samoa: it is short, it is the book everyone argues about, and it has been in the US public domain since 2024.
Where to Start with Margaret Mead
If you want her defining book
→ Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) — adolescence on a Pacific island, and the start of a long debate.
If you want her argument about men and women
→ Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935) — three peoples in New Guinea, three different ideas of gender.
If you want her own story
→ Blackberry Winter (1972) — childhood, fieldwork and marriages, in her words.
If you want a conversation rather than a study
→ A Rap on Race (1971) — her recorded conversation with James Baldwin.
10 Margaret Mead Books, in Order
Coming of Age in Samoa
Based on fieldwork in 1925–1926 among girls and young women in three villages on Taʻū, in American Samoa, with a foreword by her teacher Franz Boas. Mead argued that adolescence there was a calm transition, without the turmoil Americans assumed was inevitable, and that the difference lay in culture rather than biology. It became the most widely read anthropology book of its time, and in 1983 the target of Derek Freeman’s attack.
Growing Up in New Guinea
Children on Manus in the Admiralty Islands, where Mead did fieldwork in 1928–1929 with her second husband, the anthropologist Reo Fortune. She follows how children are raised and how they become adults, and sets this against American ideas about education.
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies
Three peoples of the Sepik region of New Guinea, studied in 1931–1933: the Arapesh, where she described both men and women as gentle and cooperative; the Mundugumor, where both were aggressive; and the Tchambuli (Chambri), where she saw the roles Westerners expected reversed. Her conclusion was that temperament attached to each sex is largely shaped by culture.
Balinese Character
Written with her third husband, Gregory Bateson, after their fieldwork in Bali in the late 1930s. Hundreds of photographs, arranged in sequences with commentary, are used as evidence in their own right, which made the book an early landmark of visual anthropology.
And Keep Your Powder Dry
Written during the Second World War, it turns the methods she had used in the Pacific on her own country, describing American character and what it meant for the war effort.
Male and Female
A wider book on sex roles, drawing on the Pacific societies she had studied and comparing them with the United States after the war: how each culture divides work, temperament and expectations between men and women, and what that means for American family life.
New Lives for Old
In 1953 Mead returned to Manus, 25 years after her first visit. After the Second World War the people she had known as children had remade their society, and the book records how a community chose to change so quickly.
Culture and Commitment
A short book on the generation gap of the late 1960s. Mead divides cultures into postfigurative (the young learn from their elders), cofigurative (from their peers) and prefigurative (where the elders must learn from the young), and argues the modern world had entered the third.
A Rap on Race
The transcript of a conversation between Mead and the writer James Baldwin, recorded in August 1970 and published by Lippincott in 1971. They range over identity, power and privilege, race, religion and guilt, often disagreeing.
Blackberry Winter
Her autobiography of the first half of her life: her childhood in Pennsylvania, her studies at Barnard and Columbia, her fieldwork in Samoa, New Guinea and Bali, her three marriages and the birth of her daughter, the anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson.
In What Order to Read Margaret Mead
Her books do not follow on from each other, so you can read by subject. Publication order does show a line, though: the field studies of the 1920s and 1930s, the books of the 1940s that apply anthropology to America and to men and women, and the late books where she speaks as a public figure.
Read Coming of Age in Samoa first, then Sex and Temperament, which takes the same question about nature and culture further. If you want to understand the Freeman controversy, read Coming of Age before any book about it, so you know what was actually claimed.
A reading path
1. Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)
2. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935)
3. Male and Female (1949)
4. A Rap on Race (1971)
5. Blackberry Winter (1972)
Everything Else Margaret Mead Published
Beyond the 10 key books: 10 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Field studies
2
2 books · 1932–1971
- 1932The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribefieldwork with Reo Fortune in Nebraska, 1930
- 1971The Mountain Arapesh: Stream of Events in Alitoaa late monograph on the Arapesh
Studies of culture and change
5
5 books · 1951–1964
- 1951Soviet Attitudes Toward Authoritya study made at a distance, in the early Cold War
- 1953The Study of Culture at a Distanceedited with Rhoda Métraux
- 1953Cultural Patterns and Technical Changeas editor
- 1954Themes in French Culturewith Rhoda Métraux
- 1964Continuities in Cultural Evolutionon how cultures change
Other books
3
3 books · 1959–1975
- 1959An Anthropologist at Workthe writings of Ruth Benedict, as editor
- 1959People and Placesan introduction to anthropology for young readers
- 1975A Way of Seeingessays from her Redbook column, with Rhoda Métraux
The years · 1901–1978
Quick facts about Margaret Mead
- Known for
- Making anthropology a public subject in America, above all through her argument in Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) that culture, not biology alone, shapes how people grow up.
- 1901
- Born in Philadelphia
- 1949
- Male and Female
- 1978
- Dies in New York
- Born
- 16 December 1901, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Died
- 15 November 1978, New York City
- Education
- Barnard College (BA 1923); Columbia University (MA 1924, PhD 1929), under Franz Boas
- Worked
- American Museum of Natural History, New York, from 1926; curator of ethnology 1946–1969
- Fieldwork
- Samoa, Manus, the Sepik region of New Guinea, Bali
- Married
- Luther Cressman, Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson; one daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson
- Honours
- Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded posthumously in 1979
The red mark is 1928: Coming of Age in Samoa, the book that made her famous.
How Margaret Mead Writes: Fieldwork for Everyone
Mead’s books start from fieldwork: months living in a village, watching children and talking to young people in their own language. Her question was nearly always the same one Franz Boas set her: how much of what Americans thought was human nature was in fact culture. Each study sets a Pacific society beside the United States and asks what the comparison shows.
She wrote for general readers on purpose. Coming of Age in Samoa opens with a lyrical description of a day in a village and ends with chapters addressed directly to American parents and teachers. Later she reached a mass audience through her Redbook column, written with Rhoda Métraux, and through radio and television. With Gregory Bateson she also used the camera as a research tool: Balinese Character lets photographs carry the argument.
The same strengths drew criticism. Colleagues objected that her vivid generalisations ran ahead of her data, and Derek Freeman later argued her Samoan conclusions were simply wrong. Later scholars who went back to her field notes mostly defended her honesty while agreeing she overstated some points.
Watch
Margaret Mead on The Dick Cavett Show
Dick Cavett interviews Margaret Mead on The Dick Cavett Show, broadcast on 26 June 1972, about her time at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. From the official Dick Cavett Show channel.
Frequently asked questions about Margaret Mead’s books
How many books has Margaret Mead written?
More than twenty, counting books she co-wrote and edited. Ten are the key books on this page, from Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) to Blackberry Winter (1972); the others are listed under “Everything Else”.
What are Margaret Mead’s books in order?
Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), Growing Up in New Guinea (1930), Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), Balinese Character (1942, with Gregory Bateson), And Keep Your Powder Dry (1942), Male and Female (1949), New Lives for Old (1956), Culture and Commitment (1970), A Rap on Race (1971, with James Baldwin) and Blackberry Winter (1972).
Where should I start with Margaret Mead?
Coming of Age in Samoa (1928). It is short, it is the book her reputation rests on, and it is the one the Freeman controversy is about. Follow it with Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935).
What is Margaret Mead’s most famous book?
Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), her study of adolescent girls on the island of Taʻū in American Samoa, with a foreword by Franz Boas. For decades it was the most widely read book in anthropology.
What was the Derek Freeman controversy about?
In 1983, five years after Mead’s death, the New Zealand anthropologist Derek Freeman published Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth (Harvard University Press). He argued that Samoan society was strict, competitive and often violent, and that Mead had been misled by her informants; in a later book, The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead, he said two young women had admitted joking with her. The American Anthropological Association passed a motion in 1983 calling his book “poorly written, unscientific, irresponsible and misleading”. Martin Orans, who studied Mead’s field notes, concluded in 1996 that she had not been hoaxed, and Paul Shankman’s The Trashing of Margaret Mead (2009) argued that Freeman used evidence selectively. Many anthropologists still think Mead overstated Samoan sexual freedom, so the debate continues.
What did Margaret Mead and James Baldwin talk about?
In August 1970 Mead and Baldwin recorded a long conversation, published in 1971 as A Rap on Race. They discussed identity, power and privilege, race, religion and history, and often disagreed.
What is Blackberry Winter about?
Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years (1972) is Mead’s autobiography: her childhood in Pennsylvania, her studies with Franz Boas, her fieldwork in the Pacific, her three marriages and the birth of her daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson.
Did Margaret Mead win any awards?
Yes. She received the Kalinga Prize for the popularisation of science in 1970, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1975, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom after her death, in 1979.
Is Margaret Mead still alive?
No. She was born on 16 December 1901 in Philadelphia and died of pancreatic cancer in New York City on 15 November 1978, aged 76.
Footnotes
- Margaret Mead — Wikipedia
- Coming of Age in Samoa — Wikipedia
- Coming of Age in Samoa (full text) — Project Gutenberg
- Sex, lies and videotape: Shankman on Freeman and Mead — University of Colorado, 2009
- A Rap on Race — Wikipedia
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“During the last hundred years parents and teachers have ceased to take childhood and adolescence for granted.”
— Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), the first line of the book
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