When initially published, these essays provided a salutary textual critique of anthropology. Today they read as essays whose implications are circumscribed to the work of that generation of American cultural anthropologists who developed in the shadows of modernist giants (namely Geertz). This collection represents their mid-life crisis, rather than the field of ethnography. Most of their students (and students' students) have not repeated that generation's unreflexive ethical idealism and political naivete. This progress was not a result of these essays. The exception in this book is Tyler's innovative and actually experimental proposal for "writing culture". Otherwise, be warned. Read these critiques by baby boomer-era anthropologists with a grain of salt.